FALL 2025

As the College celebrates its sesquicentennial, we offer 150 glimpses into Wellesley’s inspiring story. Together, they illuminate the corners of campus, brilliant scholars, trailblazing alumnae, and moments of joy that have shaped this extraordinary community and proved the wisdom of our founders’ radical idea: Educating women leads to progress for everyone.

A new report affirms that Wellesley graduates rise to the top of their fields and drive meaningful change across society.

The Wellesley College Botanic Gardens, celebrating 100 years, foster both scientific and humanistic engagement with plants.

Wellesley offers alumnae the chance to travel the world through programs that extend the College’s intellectual community far beyond campus. In July 2025, for example, a group of alums and guests boarded the Diana, a 192-passenger expedition vessel, for a 10-night cruise along the coast of Norway and through its fjords.

Tributes to members of the Wellesley community

From the Chair of the Wellesley College Board of Trustees

Books and media by the Wellesley community

Otto von Bosse is an unhappy foot surgeon in Berlin. Jack Holt is a math whiz who is expelled from his private Dallas high school the day before graduation. These two characters are fundamental to the latest novel by Amy Mitchell Poeppel ’88, Far and Away..

Wellesley’s 150th anniversary is a moment to honor the College’s long tradition of service and embody its motto, Non Ministrari sed Ministrare. To mark this milestone, the College community is aiming to collectively complete 150,000 hours of volunteer service worldwide by May 2026.

From College Hall (1875) to the Vivian A. Kao ’04 Health and Counseling Center (2025), Wellesley’s buildings include a wide range of architectural styles, thoughtfully integrated into the campus’s landscape.

One hundred and fifty years ago, Wellesley College opened its doors to 314 students eager to learn in a world that did not yet expect them to learn, let alone lead. Five years later, 59 graduates gathered in the drawing room of College Hall to form the Alumnae Association—planting the seeds of a community now over 35,000 strong.

In August, Claudia Joskowicz, a video artist and associate professor of art at Wellesley, found herself in a bind. She was supposed to be wrapping up shooting on a new project set in Bolivia’s Andean salt flats. Instead, she was grounded on the opposite side of the country—without any footage to show for her efforts. On the eve of national elections, Bolivia faced a nationwide gas crisis, and the production bill for her project suddenly quintupled.

New and noteworthy from campus

Last spring, as part of Wellesley’s 150th anniversary celebration, the campus community was invited to submit proposals for projects commemorating the College’s rich and diverse history. Anna Mkrtchyan ’28 was one of the grantees.

From the first Flower Sunday to the College Hall fire to the creation of Ethos to the COVID pandemic, these are some of the moments that tested and built Wellesley. In the photo above from May 1914, the sophomore class forms the senior class numerals with College Hall ruins in the background.

The Friday of reunion weekend, while friends were boarding flights and getting in cars to make their way to Wellesley, I was also heading to campus—but I was wrestling my 16-month-old into his car seat before rushing to the Wellesley Community Children’s Center and then my office in Green Hall. For me, May 2025 marked two Wellesley milestones: my 15th reunion as an alum and my four-year anniversary as an employee.

This summer, my Green Hall colleagues and I packed everything in our offices to relocate to temporary space across campus before critical repairs began in Green. It was a formidable undertaking.

In September 1875, Wellesley College welcomed its first incoming class. More than 300 students showed up, along with mountains of luggage—and concerned family members. For a young woman to go off to college at the time was a break with the past. Imagine the courage they must have possessed!

Letters to the Editor, Fall 2025

In September, Wellesley Repertory Theatre (WRT) welcomed the inaugural cohort of WRT grant recipients, Maia Macdonald ’06, Annie Jin Wang ’14, and Sabina Sethi Unni ’19, as part of the first Wellesley Repertory Theatre Festival. Above, Jess Balgobin delivers a monologue in Flood Sensor Aunty, a comedic play by Unni about community disaster preparedness. Learn more about the festival at wellesley.edu/news.

Wellesley opened its doors to the 578 members of the green class of 2029 in August.

How well do you know Wellesley’s traditions, current and defuct? Take our quiz!

Leaders in their fields and deeply committed teachers, Wellesley’s faculty have shaped generations of students and the College itself.

Astronomers, journalists, artists, lawyers, filmmakers, civil servants—Wellesley alumnae have broken barriers in countless fields.

The power of the Wellesley community is both the deep connections forged on campus and the ties built across generations.

Residential and deeply community-based, student life at Wellesley may have changed a great deal over 150 years (parietals? what are those?) but a constant is the blend of academic rigor with a supportive, close-knit environment.

After 150 years, a college is bound to have accumulated some things. Here is a small sampling of some of our favorite treasures from around campus.

Wellesley College has long been home to interdisciplinary centers, conferences, and institutes that extend learning beyond the classroom and connect students with global ideas and leadership opportunities—and bring Wellesley into the world, leading to progress and change.

The award-winning Wellesley landscape is a laboratory, a source of inspiration, a place to build community, and a jumping-off point for students who go on to support sustainable practices around the world.

Pets, legends, accidents, and campus treasures—basically, cool facts that didn't really fit in any other section!