History of The College of William & Mary - Firsts

Firsts

William & Mary is the second-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, established in 1693 (Harvard is the oldest).

The College was the first to teach Political Economy; Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was a required textbook. In the reform of 1779, William & Mary became the first college in America to become a university, establishing faculties of law and medicine; it was also the first college to establish a chair of modern languages. Chemistry was taught beginning in the nineteenth century; alumnus and future Massachusetts Institute of Technology founder William Barton Rogers served as the College's Professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry from 1828 to 1835.

Beginning with his 1778 Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge, alumnus and future University of Virginia founder Thomas Jefferson was involved with efforts to secularize and reform the College's curriculum. Jefferson guided the College to adopt the nation's first elective system of study and to introduce the first student-adjudicated Honor System.

Also at Jefferson's behest, the College appointed his friend and mentor George Wythe as the first Professor of Law in America in 1779. John Marshall, who would later go on to become Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was one of Wythe's students. The College's Marshall-Wythe School of Law is the oldest law school in the United States.

Along with establishment of new, firmer financial footing, the creation of the graduate schools in law and medicine officially made the "College" a school meeting the contemporary definition of a "university" by 1779, notwithstanding the retention of the original name as set forth in the 1693 Royal Charter.