Alumnae Association Records (OF-1S-7zp)

Biographical/Historical Note

Brown alumnae first formed a "temporary organization of Women Graduate of Brown University" in 1900. The group of women formally organized in 1901 as the Andrews Association, named after Brown President E. Benjamin Andrews, a strong supporter of the Women's College in Brown University. In 1906, without substantial change in its purpose, the association changed its name to the Alumnae Association of Brown University. In the 1950s and 1960s, the organization was sometimes known as the Alumnae Association of Pembroke College in Brown University or the Pembroke College Alumnae Association, but the official name apparently never changed. Two years after the merger of Pembroke College and Brown University, in 1973, the Alumnae Association merged with the Associated Alumni of Brown University.

Although the association grew substantially over its seventy two year life, its structure remained fairly constant. Elected officers, including a president, treasurer, and a few vice presidents, formed an executive board, responsible for the general management of the organization. In the 1940s, a board of directors, which included the executive board and other representatives, assumed the overall management of the association. The former executive board became the executive committee, which, among other tasks, carried out the decisions of the board of directors. The membership met in annual and special meetings. Alumnae club representatives and others occasionally gathered on campus as the Alumnae Council, which was not a decision-making body.

The Alumnae Association at first was open only women who had graduated from the Women's College but later was comprised of all women who had attended Brown. The association always facilitated continued contact among alumnae and served as an important fund raiser for what became Pembroke College, particularly through the Brown Alumnae Fund, which later became the Pembroke College Fund. In its early years, however, the association also played an important part in campus life, providing social activities and female role models for women taught almost exclusively by male professors. In addition to officers, committee members, and a large body of regular paying and non-paying members (at times non-paying members did not receive publications), the Alumnae Association had a small paid staff in the Alumnae Office on campus, published a newsletter, worked with class agents to raise monies, organized class secretaries who collected class notes for the newsletter, and encouraged members to form Alumnae Clubs in their cities. The first clubs, in Boston and New York, were formed in 1909; after 1973, most clubs merged with the alumni clubs. The paid staff included an executive secretary, and later a newsletter editor and others; these salaries were provided by the association and the university. The Brown Alumnae Fund and Pembroke College Fund had their own board of trustees and paid staff. The association's relationship to class officers and other alumnae bodies is difficult to ascertain as, for example, the class secretaries at one time had a committee within the association and at another formed their own organization which had representation on the Alumnae Association's board of directors.