Current Library Exhibits
Stars, Flowers, Feathers, & Leaves:Studying the Sciences at Wheaton
(February - March 2008)
The sciences and mathematics have formed a vital part of the curriculum since Wheaton Female Seminary opened in 1835. Half of the courses in the first year were maths and sciences, both in response to the Industrial Revolution and to provide higher education for women equal to that available for men. The 1898/99 catalogue stated that, "The instruction is by text book, lecture, collateral reading, laboratory work, field work, and note book, the aim being to cultivate the powers of observation and infuse the scientific spirit as well as to impart information. What the student is led to discover for herself, under proper guidance, becomes more thoroughly her own than what is acquired by the mechanical memorization of facts." These methods will sound familiar to the modern student.
During the Seminary's early years, the easiest subjects of scientific study were those that were convenient in the natural world: birds, moss, leaves, and the like. Students and teachers ventured out of the classroom into the fields and forests for examples of the principles they studied. A student of the 1860s wrote that in Natural History pupils learned not only of laws and classifications, but gained "new ears for the bird-songs, new eyes for the thousand shadings of a moth's wing; an even keener sense of the delicacy and perfume of flowers, and a new kinship with the whole of nature." Teacher Lucy Larcom wrote in her 1861 journal, "How life communicated life! The dullest girls listened with wide-awake interest, to a subject which, in a book, would have seemed to them drearily scientific. In a walk...some of us found out new mysteries in the meadows - growths, gardens on old tree trunks and fence-rails...." Herbaria, collections of pressed flowers and leaves, are some of the earliest surviving student notebooks in our collection.
The images, student notebooks, and other objects presented in this exhibit illustrate the study of sciences and maths from the 1830s to the present. They show that the approach to teaching the fundamentals of science and math emphasized in this exhibit has not changed markedly since Wheaton's founding. Modern technology has made it possible for Wheaton students to study and research new scientific breakthroughs, but the subject matter for at least some foundation courses remains remarkably unchanged.
Past Library Exhibits
Cabinets of Curiosity: Collections from the Wheaton Community (December 2007 - January 2008)
Bicultural Diné (Navajo) Education (November 2007)
Art of the Book (May 2007)
Global Days for Darfur (April - May 2007)
Will at Wheaton: Shakespeare in the Theatre, in the Classroom and in our Daily Lives (March - April 2007)
The History of African-American Students at Wheaton College: 1834-1950 (February 2006)
This page is maintained by Kate Freedman. Last updated on 2/12/08.
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