History
Lasell was founded in 1851 as the Auburndale Female Seminary by Williams College Professor of Chemistry, Edward Lasell, after he took a sabbatical from his job in Williamstown to teach at the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, where the experience inspired him to invest more personally in women's education. He died of typhoid fever during the first semester, but his school proved highly successful as a first-rate educational institution and was soon renamed Lasell Female Seminary in his memory. As a nationally respected ladies' academy, its students came from all over the United States and were often courted by students from Harvard College.
Its name later changed to Lasell Seminary for Young Women and, in 1874, governance was given to a board of trustees and Principal Charles C. Bragdon. Bragdon further expanded the faculty to make Lasell renowned as a more academically rigorous women's institution, a prestigious finishing school with a highly scientific approach to domestic work, art, and music. As an innovative institution, known for a radical approach to women's education at the time, Lasell also administered the Harvard exams and offered law courses for women.
While the initial model was more like that of a ladies' finishing academy, Lasell also offered two years of standard collegiate instruction as early as 1852 and is cited as having been the "first successful and persistent" junior college in the United States. In 1932, the college changed its name to Lasell Junior College, and the school officially began offering associate's degrees in 1943. In 1989, Lasell adopted a charter to become a four-year institution (it no longer offers any two-year undergraduate degrees), and began admitting male students in 1997. Lasell also began offering master's degrees in 2002.
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