Wooster was founded in 1866 by Presbyterians who wanted to do "their proper part in the great work of educating those who are to mold society and give shape to all its institutions." The goal of the first Board of Trustees was to "establish an institution with broad foundations and facilities equal to the best in the land, capable of preparing men and women for every department of life, for the highest walks of science and all its forms." A citizen of Wooster, Ephraim Quinby, donated a venerable oak grove set on twenty-two acres on a hill overlooking the Killbuck Valley, and the Trustees of the fledgling institution spent the next four years raising funds so that the school might open with buildings, books, a laboratory, scientific equipment, experienced faculty members, and an adequate endowment.

On September 8, 1870, Wooster opened its doors as a university, with a faculty of five and a student body of thirty men and four women. By 1915 there were eight divisions, including a medical school whose faculty outnumbered those in the college of arts and sciences. Gradually, however, the institution's definition as a liberal arts college had been evolving. In 1915 a traumatic episode occurred: there was a bitter fight over whether Wooster should establish yet another division within its structure. At first, the Trustees sided with the minority of the faculty which favored the new division, and then, after the resignation of President Holden, reversed themselves and supported the majority of the faculty which wished to devote itself entirely to undergraduates in the liberal arts. It was an angry struggle in which friends and colleagues of thirty years parted company. Speaking in Chapel in 1930, Howard Lowry, who was to become Wooster's seventh President, gave some sense of the conflict which had occurred.

Old Main An aspiration for excellence marked the College from its inception. Jonas Notestein, a student in Wooster's first graduating class, wrote that "a kind of prophetic feeling possessed us all that this was to be a great institution after a time, that we were starting ideals and setting standards and that it became us to do our very best so that the after generations of students would have something to be proud of." The refrain of "something to be proud of" echoes through the years: the "habit of mastery" which became the trademark of the early faculty; the rebuilding of the College after the great fire of 1901, five buildings replacing one within a year's time; President Wishart's vigorous defense of the freedom of inquiry in a clash with William Jennings Bryan over the examination at Wooster of the subject of evolution; the practice of student research projects which led Karl Compton to work with George Bacon on x-rays in the first decade of this century; Arthur Compton's receipt of a Nobel Prize in 1927; and the establishment by Howard Lowry of Independent Study and the faculty leave program in the 1940s.

Another important dimension of Wooster's history is its early dedication to the education of women. Willis Lord, the first President, made a strong commitment to coeducation, warning the early classes that Wooster had the same expectations of its women as it had of its men and that men and women would be taught in the same classes and pursue the same curriculum. In 1870 this was a controversial policy, and a diary of one of the students who heard the announcement on the first day recorded the following observation: "Coeducation is announced as a feature of the institution. I think favorably of it myself but hear a great many saying that it will be a failure. I have heard ten reasons this afternoon why it must fail." It did not fail, however, and women quickly assumed positions of leadership in the student body. The first Ph.D. granted by Wooster was given to a woman, Annie Irish, in 1882, and many of the early women graduates made careers for themselves in foreign missions, doing abroad what they could not easily do in this country--founding colleges, administering hospitals, and managing printing houses. Wooster's concern for the education of women has remained unabated, and more recent women graduates have entered path-breaking careers in business, higher education, and the diplomatic corps.

Likewise, on the matter of race, Wooster was clear from the beginning. The first President declared that Wooster should be a place of studies for all: "The sameness of our origin as men and women carries with it our original and essential equality. Had our national life been the true expression of our national creed, slavery would have been forever impossible. Caste, in whatever name, strikes at the soul of our humanity and liberty." The first black student, Clarence Allen, entered the College in the 1880s, and the promise of the early vision still inspires the College. Today approximately 6 percent of Wooster's student body is black, and the College is proud of its black graduates, many of whom have entered the fields of medicine, law, business, the ministry, education, government, and the social services. In 1988, Wooster's Board of Trustees created The Clarence Allen Scholarships to be awarded on the basis of academic merit. These scholarships commemorate the achievements of Wooster's first black graduate a century ago.

Wooster has long emphasized international education. An unusually high percentage of its early graduates went overseas as missionaries, and soon not only their sons and daughters, but also the students from their schools, were enrolling at Wooster as students. There were special houses for these students where every occupant spoke two or three languages and where friendships developed among students from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. A student living in one of these houses observed: "For much of the time, we were as far removed from the ordinary atmosphere of the surrounding Ohio farm country as if we had actually been transplanted to Asia." This international presence affected the entire campus, establishing a tradition which continues to influence the College. Today approximately 7 percent of the student body is international in origin, representing more than 40 different countries. Majors in Cultural Area Studies and International Relations, instruction in seven foreign languages, twenty overseas programs, and the popularity of Babcock International House, all attest to a global awareness which is a vital part of the educational fabric of the College.

Religion also played a vital part in the creation of the College. The Articles of Incorporation specify that the purpose of the institution is "the promotion of sound learning and education under religious influences." Moreover, the College's motto - Scientia et religio ex uno fonte (Science and religion from one source) - emphasizes the integrated life. For its first hundred years, the College was owned by the Synod of Ohio. In 1969, the Synod of Ohio voted to release ownership of the College and its assets to Wooster's Board of Trustees, and thus today the College is a fully independent institution which, however, has voluntarily chosen to continue its relationship with The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) through a Memorandum of Understanding with The Synod of the Covenant.

Wooster was a college born of a faith, a faith that education ought to be concerned with the total implication of things, both with those questions which may be empirically tested and those for which there are no definitive answers. Wooster has always possessed a strong Department of Religious Studies as well as the conviction that there is something beyond men and women which may confer a sense of proportion and worth on their lives and give them purpose and direction, a faith which Arthur Compton defined as "the best we know, on which we would willingly bet our lives." The expressions of this religious spirit have been many and varied, and in each decade there have been student projects which express the ethical concerns of the time. In the midst of the Depression, Wooster students raised funds to send a graduating senior to India to teach, a tradition which continued until the 1970s. There were rice meals to raise money to assist international students and to bring refugees to this country from Nazi Germany. Today, approximately one-third of the College's students are involved in volunteer service through the Volunteer Network, an umbrella organization composed of 25-30 student groups engaged in projects ranging from recycling to raising money for local and national hunger programs, from serving the elderly and disabled to working on race relations and women's issues. Wooster's graduates have continued the tradition of being oriented toward service and finding the purpose of their lives in fields through which they can enrich the lives of others. The aspiration to join the ability to think logically with the ability to act morally, to link science with service, to educate the heart as well as the mind, was present from the beginning and continues to inform the College and its graduates today.

From the beginning, science was given a prominent place at the College because it was believed that scientific discovery could only lend greater weight to moral truth; science could, in President Lord's words, give "silent but eloquent witness to the uncreated and the infinite." There could be no conflict between reason and faith, because of their common source, and whatever the unfettered mind found to be true would be in tune with the infinite harmony of the cosmos; the physical sciences should, therefore, be strong at Wooster. It is extraordinary, given the fierce religious convictions of the women and men who shaped Wooster and the conflict between science and religion in the late nineteenth century, to find the intensity with which these same religious convictions supported a scientific establishment at the College. There was nothing backward about the physical sciences at Wooster which produced Karl and Arthur Compton, and this commitment to the sciences has endured in the progressive programs of quality in the departments of Biology, Geology, Physics, Mathematical Sciences, and Chemistry, which, for example, ranks third in the nation in the percentage of its graduates who eventually receive Ph.D.s.

These are the memories of the past to which the College is entitled: "the habit of mastery," the faith in liberal learning, the commitment to "put its students in the way of great things," the commitment to offer studies for all regardless of sex or race, the international and religious dimensions of the College, and the strong commitment to the physical sciences. As Jonas Notestein understood more than a century ago, "It is our glory to dwell, to make a home and to become a part of an order which will go on after our time is finished." Wooster and its more than 28,000 graduates have inherited this inspiring tradition. In a visit to Wooster, Robert Frost once said that if you had to love something, you could do worse than to give your heart to a college, and that those who attend Wooster have a sense of belonging to a succession of generations originating in the past and stretching into the future.