Rhode Island Society for the Collegiate Education of Women records (MS.1ZW.R1)

Historical note

The Rhode Island Society for the Collegiate Education of Women (RISCEW) was founded by Providence educator and suffragist Sarah Elizabeth Doyle. Doyle had founded the Rhode Island Women's Club and had also helped found the Rhode Island School of Design. With the appointment of Elisha Benjamin Andrews as Brown University's president in 1889, Doyle found a coworker in the cause of women's higher education at Brown. Andrews succeeded in obtaining the Corporation's approval to permit women to take Brown qualifying exams in 1891 and registered seven students for classes, about which the Corporation had made no mention. In 1892, the Corporation approved the granting of undergraduate and graduate degrees to women and, in 1896, gave the growing number of women students an official status by creating the Women's College at Brown University, a department of the College. Andrews and the women's dean, Louis Franklin Snow, called on Doyle for help in the endowment and building construction of the College. RISCEW was formed in 1895 largely from the membership of the Rhode Island Women's Club (RIWC) and was incorporated in 1896 with Doyle as president and Ameila Sumner Knight (president of the RIWC) as treasurer. Pembroke Hall was completed and transferred to Brown in 1897. RISCEW served as the main fund-raising organ for the Women's College until the establishment of a large and vigorous alumnae association, but continued its financial and moral support through the 1971 merger of Pembroke and Brown, when they considered their work complete. These records of RISCEW provide a detailed picture of Pembroke's "fairy godmother" - as the membership was often called by the Women's College - at work.