Alice Palmer's Influence On Education

Intellectually--As a female who cherished intellectual and college life, Alice Palmer was to expand the enrollment of female students. She believed that girls failed to go to college because they or their parents didn’t see the benefits of college training32. She had also promoted intellectual achievements and the desire to lead a socially useful life in female students 33. As the first female president in Wellesley, Alice exercised great importance in shaping admission standards, curricular reform, and professional standards for faculties34. The curricular reform indicated her proposal for women intellectual development instead of training for motherhood. During her presidency, she slowly shifted the Wellesley focus from training Christian womanhood to cultivating young women’s
Alice Palmer’s aspiration to work at the University of Chicago to fulfill her unfinished Wellesley mission was well expressed at her vision for both her career and the newly established university: if she was vigilant and persistent, women would be able to pursue graduate degree untrammeled by the traditional male dominated universities such as Harvard and Yale, they (female graduates from University of Chicago) would hold teaching and research positions at prestigious universities and colleges, which would in turn broaden the path for female students 36. During her tenure in Chicago, Palmer persisted in lobbying President Harper for female faculties and fellows, as well as having female students access to graduate fellowships. She expected women to perform not only in classroom, but also in faculty governance and administration as equal colleagues as their male