College Of Charleston Voices

In 1770, the founders of the College of Charleston realized their dream of establishing an institution built upon the goal of instructing young minds with a traditional liberal arts education. As the oldest institution of higher learning in South Carolina, the College of Charleston has played an integral role in the development of a variety of young men and women from the Palmetto State and beyond. Numbering in the hundreds of thousands, this group of students--current and former--has enjoyed a unique college experience that they have chronicled and shared in letters to family and friends, diaries, student newspapers, journals and, more recently, e-mails. These personal accounts reveal the effect that the College of Charleston has had on its students for generations, and the ways in which those students have shaped the college's long history. This engaging book features a collection of correspondences written by College of Charleston students, from the school's earliest years to the present day. Individually, these writings offer a candid glimpse into students' daily lives during several periods throughout the college's history. Considered together, the thoughts, concerns and opinions found within paint a fascinating picture of the past at the College of Charleston.

Steve Inskeep tells the riveting story of John and Jessie Frémont, the husband and wife team who in the 1800s were instrumental in the westward expansion of the United States, and thus became America's first great political couple John C. Frémont, one of the United States’s leading explorers of the nineteenth century, was relatively unknown in 1842, when he commanded the first of his expeditions to the uncharted West. But in only a few years, he was one of the most acclaimed people of the age – known as a wilderness explorer, bestselling writer, gallant army officer, and latter-day conquistador, who in 1846 began the United States’s takeover of California from Mexico. He was not even 40 years old when Americans began naming mountains and towns after him. He had perfect timing, exploring the West just as it captured the nation’s attention. But the most important factor in his fame may have been the person who made it all possible: his wife, Jessie Benton Frémont. Jessie, the daughter of a United States senator who was deeply involved in the West, provided her husband with entrée to the highest levels of government and media, and his career reached new heights only a few months after their elopement. During a time when women were allowed to make few choices for themselves, Jessie – who herself aspired to roles in exploration and politics – threw her skill and passion into promoting her husband. She worked to carefully edit and publicize his accounts of his travels, attracted talented young men to his circle, and lashed out at his enemies. She became her husband’s political adviser, as well as a power player in her own right. In 1856, the famous couple strategized as John became the first-ever presidential nominee of the newly established Republican Party. With rare detail and in consummate style, Steve Inskeep tells the story of a couple whose joint ambitions and talents intertwined with those of the nascent United States itself. Taking advantage of expanding news media, aided by an increasingly literate public, the two linked their names to the three great national movements of the time—westward settlement, women’s rights, and opposition to slavery. Together, John and Jessie Frémont took parts in events that defined the country and gave rise to a new, more global America. Theirs is a surprisingly modern tale of ambition and fame; they lived in a time of social and technological disruption and divisive politics that foreshadowed our own. In Imperfect Union, as Inskeep navigates these deeply transformative years through Jessie and John’s own union, he reveals how the Frémonts’ adventures amount to nothing less than a tour of the early American soul.

The Medical University of South Carolina, which began with seven faculty members and thirty students, is today a large and complex institution, with six colleges, hundreds of faculty and staff, thousands of students and numerous teaching hospitals and research laboratories and libraries. In this unique collection, the remarkable narrative of MUSC's survival and growth is told through the voices of the participants: the students and professors, the deans and doctors, the administrators and employees who have been there all along. They tell their stories through lecture notes and journals, letters and diaries, minutes and memos, headlines and catalogues and, finally, through e-mails and blogs. The men and women of MUSC reveal the challenges the university has met, from wars, epidemics and earthquakes to financial and accreditation crises. And they chronicle the changes in medicine from house calls and purgatives to genetics, vaccines and organ transplants. Not least of all, they record their aspirations, fears and firsthand experiences in their own honest, often humorous, words.

Contributions by Christian K. Anderson, Marcia Bennett, Lauren Yarnell Bradshaw, Holly A. Foster, Tiffany Greer, Don Holmes, Donavan L. Johnson, Lauren Lassabe, Sarah Mangrum, R. Eric Platt, Courtney L. Robinson, David E. Taylor, Zachary A. Turner, Michael M. Wallace, and Rhonda Kemp Webb To date, most texts regarding higher education in the Civil War South focus on the widespread closure of academies. In contrast, Persistence through Peril: Episodes of College Life and Academic Endurance in the Civil War South brings to life several case histories of Southern colleges and universities that persisted through the perilous war years. Contributors tell these stories via the lived experiences of students, community members, professors, and administrators as they strove to keep their institutions going. Despite the large-scale cessation of many Southern academies due to student military enlistment, resource depletion, and campus destruction, some institutions remained open for the majority or entirety of the war. These institutions—"The Citadel" South Carolina Military Academy, Mercer University, Mississippi College, the University of North Carolina, Spring Hill College, Trinity College of Duke University, Tuskegee Female College, the University of Virginia, the Virginia Military Institute, Wesleyan Female College, and Wofford College—continued to operate despite low student numbers, encumbered resources, and faculty ranks stripped bare by conscription or voluntary enlistment. This volume considers academic and organizational perseverance via chapter “episodes” that highlight the daily operations, struggles, and successes of select Southern institutions. Through detailed archival research, the essays illustrate how some Southern colleges and universities endured the deadliest internal conflict in US history.

Volume XXII/2 of History of Universities contains the customary mix of learned articles, book reviews, and bibliographical information. In this special issue, the contributors examine the institutional and intellectual history of the Collège de Montaigu, from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century.

"This book examines how American colleges and universities since the mid-nineteenth century have used students' race, religion, and ethnicity in deciding whom to admit and how to shape enrolled students' campus social life"--

In The Qualified Student Harold S. Wechsler focuses on methods of student selection used by institutions of higher education in the United States. More specifically, he discusses the way that college and university reformers employed those methods to introduce higher education into a broader cross-section of America, by extending access to an increased number of students from nontraditional backgrounds. Implicit in much of this book is an underlying social and ethical question: How legitimate was and is higher education's regulation of social mobility? Public concern over colleges' and universities' practices became inevitable once they became regulators between social classes. The challenging of colleges' admissions policies in the courts augments similar concerns that have been present in legislatures for decades. The volume is divided into three main sections: Prerequisites, Columbia and the Selective Function, and Implications. It focuses mainly on four universities, The University of Michigan, Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and the City University of New York. Wechsler maintains that unlike other universities, these institutions were pacesetters; they did not adopt a new policy simply because some other college had already adopted it. A new introduction brings the book, originally published in 1977, up to date and demonstrates its continuing importance in today's academic world of selective admissions.

The Dictionary of Early American Philosophers, which contains over 400 entries by nearly 300 authors, provides an account of philosophical thought in the United States and Canada between 1600 and 1860. The label of "philosopher" has been broadly applied in this Dictionary to intellectuals who have made philosophical contributions regardless of academic career or professional title. Most figures were not academic philosophers, as few such positions existed then, but they did work on philosophical issues and explored philosophical questions involved in such fields as pedagogy, rhetoric, the arts, history, politics, economics, sociology, psychology, medicine, anthropology, religion, metaphysics, and the natural sciences. Each entry begins with biographical and career information, and continues with a discussion of the subject's writings, teaching, and thought. A cross-referencing system refers the reader to other entries. The concluding bibliography lists significant publications by the subject, posthumous editions and collected works, and further reading about the subject.