Ellen Fitz Pendleton was an American educator. She was a president of Wellesley College.
Background
Ellen Fitz Pendleton was born on August 7, 1864 in Westerly, Washington County, Rhode Island, United States. She was the ninth and youngest child of Enoch Burrows and Mary Ette (Chapman) Pendleton. Her parents, descendants of early New England families, settled in Westerly in 1847, where the father was a merchant and gave active service on a local level to the early Republican cause. Upon the success of the party in 1860 he was appointed postmaster of Westerly, a position which he held until his death in 1875. Ellen's childhood home was modest and comfortable, family-centered.
Education
Graduating as valedictorian of her high school class, Ellen Fitz Pendleton entered Wellesley College in 1882, seven years after its opening.
Career
After graduation in 1886, Ellen Fitz Pendleton returned immediately as tutor in mathematics and later served as instructor and associate professor. Except for a year at Newnham College, Cambridge, England, prior to taking a master's degree at Wellesley in 1891, and frequent summers abroad, she remained at Wellesley for the rest of her life. She was made dean in 1901 and acting president in 1910. In 1911 she became sixth president (and first alumna president) of the college, at a time when it was suffering from administrative confusion consequent to a decade of very rapid growth in size and to the recent introduction, invaluable in itself, of a new breadth in cultural outlook.
Urging Miss Pendleton's election, a professor wrote that Wellesley now needed an organizer "to reduce waste of energy and material and gain for the College a reputation for economy of internal administration which would command the confidence of wealthy givers. . " Miss Pendleton began her administration with strong support from faculty colleagues. Three years later, in 1914, her leadership in crisis won equal support from alumnae. One March night a fire destroyed the building which housed more than 200 students, most of the classrooms, laboratories, and faculty offices, all administrative offices, and almost all college records. The next morning, while the fire was still smoldering, she announced an immediate and early start of the spring recess and the intention to reopen at the usual time, and began to plan a campaign for funds. Within three weeks a temporary classroom and office building was ready, outlying buildings were commandeered, and classes resumed.
Guaranteed to stand for five years, the temporary structure served for seventeen years, while Miss Pendleton, in the leaky cubicle called her office, planned the physical re-creation of the college and carried steadily forward its intellectual purpose. Her administration saw the erection of five dormitories housing 650 students, three apartment buildings for faculty and one for employees, two academic buildings, and an alumnae-student building. Only then did she turn her attention to a new administration building, followed before her retirement by a sixth dormitory and a third academic building. In the twenty-five years of her presidency the size of the student body grew by less than one hundred, but fifteen impressive brick buildings were erected, and endowment funds increased more than eightfold. Her reputation as the "builder, " the "business woman, " the "unexcelled administrator" of her college was fixed. Her strength as an educator received less public notice.
Not an innovator, with stronger critical than creative gift and a more practical than philosophic mind, Ellen Fitz Pendleton was superbly clear in judgment and action but lacked skill in public speaking and interest in projecting her own personality. She was the type of person sought for working committees and for the assessment of ideas. Because she believed that broad and rigorous liberal arts education was important preparation for later scholarship, and that experience in a residential college was excellent training for citizens, she rejected all vocational pressures, insisted on high academic standards, a goal of excellence in teaching, a curriculum which supported honors work without narrow specialization, and much freedom in electives, though within a structured balance and sequence. Her sturdy support of academic and student freedoms and of democratic government through responsible faculty and student committees, her interest in new ideas, and also her slowness to endorse an experiment until convinced of its probable usefulness to the intellectual or civic development of students, made so strong an impression that students and alumnae came to think of her as the symbol as well as the builder of the college.
At various times Ellen Fitz Pendleton was president of the New England Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, vice-president of Phi Beta Kappa, and chairman of the College Entrance Examination Board. She held many memberships, centering in educational and international interests. Ellen Fitz Pendleton retired at the age of seventy-one, still vigorous, but died suddenly a month later of a paralytic stroke at the home of a niece in Newton, Massachussets on July 26, 1936. She was buried in Westerly, Rhode Island.
Achievements
Ellen Fitz Pendleton was one of most notable woman in American history. She was best known thanks to her service as president of Wellesley College for a quarter of a century.
Politics
A Republican, Ellen Fitz pendleton worked with liberals of both parties and all faiths to oppose intolerance and provincialism.
Views
Quotations:
"The step [of cooperation] is an exceedingly short one, but it is the longest the American people are prepared to take. "
Connections
Ellen Fitz Pendleton was unmarried. She had no children.
