Women's College: Agnes Scott keeps its mission

Victoria H. Watkins graduated summa cum laude five years ago from a women's college in Virginia, yet expects this spring to write a check in support of single-sex education that will go no farther than Decatur.

The beneficiary of Watkins' donation? Agnes Scott College, where applications for admission are on a record pace even as women's colleges nationwide have dwindled to their lowest numbers in decades.

"I'd prefer to support a college that continues to be committed to educating women in a single-sex environment," said Watkins, now an Atlanta-based attorney. "Having several sort of fall at the same time is really sort of disheartening. They ... have a place."

While Agnes Scott, on the heels of one of its most successful decades ever, welcomed a new president to campus, Watkins' alma mater, Randolph-Macon Woman's College, announced in September that it plans to admit men for the first time in its 115-year history and change its name to Randolph College.

The move, motivated by finances and what the institution's trustees said was a need to boost enrollment, came less than two weeks after Regis College in Massachusetts unveiled plans to go co-educational.

Both announcements reverberated nationwide among supporters of women's colleges, with a ripple effect on Agnes Scott. The college in January welcomes its first Randolph-Macon transfers since that institution decided to go co-ed.

"I really wanted to stay because I love the school, but I just didn't feel right about it," said Hayley Maxwell, a freshman who is one of the Randolph-Macon students joining Agnes Scott next month. "It takes [Randolph-Macon] out of a special league and just makes them a small liberal arts school."

Maxwell, who plans to study psychology and environmental issues, said she's found single-gender classes easier to focus in, where women are "more themselves in that situation, they don't hold back. In the classroom, guys are a distraction."

While the number of women's colleges once hovered around 300, the Washington, D.C.-based Women's College Coalition now counts 56 institutions as members.

Many fell by the wayside within the last 40 years, as the civil rights movement and the women's movement broke down doors of historically white, male institutions.

"Most women's colleges were founded at a time when most women had extremely limited access to higher education," said Susan Lennon, the coalition's executive director.

According to Stephanie Balmer, Agnes Scott's admissions dean, fewer than 3 percent of women taking the SAT indicate that they will consider attending a women's college, in effect making such institutions a kind of niche market.

The choice to go to one is often very deliberate. Watkins, for example, said she chose one for academic reasons and "it seemed like a much better home away from home."

Women's college supporters point to research to back that sentiment. In 2004, Indiana University's Center for Postsecondary Research reported women attending women's colleges experienced higher levels of engagement.

In contrast, Duke University did a study in 2003 that found women on its coeducational campus experienced a drop in intellectual and personal confidence over the course of their undergraduate years.

Balmer said her office began to receive inquiries from Randolph-Macon students immediately after that institution decided to go coed. Now, of the at least three Randolph-Macon students accepted as transfers, one has already moved her belongings to campus despite the winter academic break.

Such enrollments come at a time when overall applications for next fall have topped 1,500 --- well over the 750 applications that arrived in Agnes Scott's admissions office four years ago.

Balmer said 75 percent of the college's student body is from the Southeast, attracted by metro Atlanta's reputation as both an economic and academic hub.

To further that advantage, the 117-year-old college has also made itself over, emphasizing international studies, programs that include nontraditional students as well as dual-degree programs with nearby Emory University and Georgia Tech.

Under the watch of President Emerita Mary Brown Bullock, who retired Aug. 1 after 11 years, Agnes Scott's enrollment grew from 608 to more than 1,000 and the campus underwent a $120 million face-lift. Its $300 million endowment ranks the institution 29th in the nation in endowment-dollars-per-student, according to a June report from the National Association of College and University Business Officers.

Those changes are credited for keeping Agnes Scott current to a new generation of students, as well as strong in its pocketbook. New Agnes Scott President Elizabeth Kiss, who was the founding director of Duke's Kenan Institute for Ethics, sums it up this way: Women's colleges are "counter-cultural in a new way."

Kiss --- whose name is pronounced like "quiche" --- has quickly settled into her new routine, embarking on a listening tour as she develops a new strategic plan for the college. At the same time, in an example that reinforces the kind of campus intimacy championed by the college's supporters, Kiss joined an intramural student kickball team (although the one time she was available to play, the game was rained out).

"I'm in the incredibly lucky position of building on incredibly strong work," Kiss said. "There's many more young women who should be thinking about women's colleges. We have to be thinking about what's cutting edge in areas of scholarship and teaching. My sense is we just need to work harder."

The overall number of colleges and universities, including those that are state-supported, is booming, heightening the fierce competition for students and their tuition dollars.

"It's a tough world in which to operate," the coalition's Lennon said. "Most of our schools do have to deal with very practical issues. But by and large, women's colleges that have done a good job reinventing themselves [have done so] with contemporary interpretations of their missions."

Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution