It's crazy to think that 150 years ago, Chatham was an experiment, and we are all coming out on the other side of that experiment, and it ties you to something bigger than yourself.

Chatham has always been a place that serves as a beacon.

People are looking for a place which will foster a sense of meaning and enable them to become their best selves.

I think a lot of people fall in love with Chatham, not only because of the beauty of the campus, which is really extraordinary and everyone speaks about it, but it has to do with the particular dedication to the individual student.

It is a place that never was happy with being static, but was always interested in change, always interested in self-transformation, and always interested in becoming something new.

I still count my closest friends among Chatham women, and I feel a special sisterhood with the women of Chatham College.

Every time I come on this campus, it takes me back to my four years here, and I just feel that I am part of this campus.

It's the red brick.

It's the stone.

It's a place that is alive with nostalgia as well as a sense of today.

It is this place that gives us an opportunity to be who we want to be, and to become who we want to become.

It is this place, Chatham.

Pittsburgh, 1869.

A city of factories and furnaces.

This is the time of the steel mills, coal and coke works, and lots and lots of smoke.

But there was more than just industry in the air.

Pittsburgh in 1869 was, as James Parton said, hell with the lid taken off.

He was really talking about Pittsburgh being in a very innovative, industrial place where utterly new things were happening.

George Westinghouse was just starting the air brake company, and Henry Hines was just starting to make processed food that was safe to eat.

Andrew Mellon's father had just started a bank.

There was also at the same time, the first wave of feminism, you could say.

So women were not shrinking violets at this point, especially educated women.

It was a time when women were valued, for their ability to do something for their city to be of service to the place where they lived.

While the first colleges for women were appearing in other parts of the country, there were very few opportunities for women in western Pennsylvania.

In 1869, Reverend William Trimble Beatty of Shadyside Presbyterian Church called a meeting of Pittsburgh's biggest power players to do something about it.

It was a pretty radical notion.

If you think about it, this was still 50 years before women had the right to vote.

There were feelings that education would ruin women.

Women should not go to college because it might damage their reproductive health.

The University of Pittsburgh did not admit women.

The Pennsylvania State University did not admit women.

A charter of incorporation was granted on December 11th, 1869, by the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, legalizing business under the name Pennsylvania Female College.

One of the first orders of business was finding a location for the college.

Ultimately, they chose the property owned by George A Berry.

This included ten and a half acres of land and a three story, red brick mansion in the American Gothic style that was said to have been the largest private residence in the county.

All this land, these ten and a half acres, was farmland, cows grazing in the fields where we see houses now.

The property was nestled on a high wooded hilltop overlooking much of Shady Side, Oakland and East Liberty.

It's hard to imagine that the founders could have realized the role that the land they selected played in the development of Chatham University.

They named the building Berry Hall, and students lived there.

Faculty lived there.

Administrators lived there all together.

They had classes in that building.

They dined in that building.

They had lectures in that building.

Campus events like graduation.

Everything happened in that building.

They learned physics.

They learned chemistry.

They learned biology.

And the trustees were amazed when they saw women in the chemistry lab.

They said“I've never seen anything like this before” There were a lot of female academies that were more like finishing schools.

But Pennsylvania Female College was going to be a place where women could study the same subjects as men.

And it was a new thought.

Pretty innovative.

As the 19th century drew to a close, the changing fabric of society pushed the Pennsylvania Female College to truly define itself as an institution committed to the lives and careers of its students.

But in those early years, it was impossible to imagine the challenges and victories waiting in the future or the mark the college would make on history.

In 1890, the students of the Pennsylvania Female College knew that times were changing for women and raised the standard for what they wished to achieve in their education.

The alumni magazine at the time records that the students feel they're slowly rising out of the narrow word female, and would like to be recognized as belonging to a college that teaches them to be women.

The impetus for the changing of the name came not from the board, but from the students and the faculty coming together and saying, we want a name that will be more progressive, that will actually reflect where we see things heading as we're just on the dawn of the 20th century.

The Board of Trustees accepted the student petition, and the Court of Common Pleas approved an application to change the name of the school to the Pennsylvania College for Women.

Women's movements were becoming more and more important in the 1890s, because women were taking more of a role in their communities by starting organizations that helped new immigrants and helped poorer people.

Chatham students were involved in the broader movement for women's rights.

They marched in protests downtown, in parades, they worked in settlement houses, they went into social service, professional work.

While enrollment tightened during the Great Depression, The students and faculty of the Pennsylvania College for Women kept school spirit alive with song contests and elaborate Mayday celebrations.

When the country was rocked by World War Two, the school evolved its programs to prepare women to enter new areas of the workforce left vacant by the draft.

The attitude toward women was they should be barefoot and pregnant and stay in the kitchen.

So women were’t looked at as people who were going to be doctors or scientists or mathematicians.

The war changed that because women went to work and took the place of men, and they began to be respected more as people who had something to offer.

When I came to Pennsylvania College for Women, we didn't feel that we were competing against anyone or that we had to be softspoken.

We could say whatever we thought.

It made a big difference in how I thought about myself.

It really gave me a feeling of self-confidence that my opinion maybe was important too.

Empowering women to believe in their voice was central to an education at the Pennsylvania College for Women.

Among the many graduates who carried this mission out into the world stands one woman whose work changed the course of the 20th century.

Rachel Carson came to PCW in 1925 to study writing.

She was going to be an English major.

But the science courses captivated her.

Rachel Carson changed the world, changed the way the world thinks about biology and the environment and what dangerous chemicals were doing to the environment.

If you think about what was it that enabled her to become one of the founders of the modern environmental movement with her book, Silent Spring, and her series of books about the oceans, it was really a combination of attributes that only the liberal arts can build.

Chatham has always been the liberal arts and sciences.

What characterizes a liberal arts and sciences college is that we want people to think about different ways of knowing, to be able to communicate your thoughts and your discoveries with others, and to appreciate the role others play in those discoveries.

Rachel Carson, in many ways, does exemplify what many of our Chatham students will experience.

She came in with the idea of being a writer.

We made her take a science course, and she fell in love with it.

We desperately need a whole new generation of Rachel Carsons who are willing to take on that sense of social justice and activism, having the courage and the bravery to want to make a difference.

And so that's what we see is our mission is to be able to develop those people who can inspire their peers and a whole generation to see, not just the challenges, but the huge opportunities that are out there If we can build this cleaner, more sustainable future.

Rachel Carson reminds each one of us that whether one is writing, imaging, doing scientific work, it is our political obligation to be connected to the world in responsible ways.

It is possible.

She has shown us the way.

After eight decades of preparing thousands of world ready women, the Pennsylvania College for Women stood on the cusp of a new era: one that would require strong visionaries, bold decisions, and even bigger dreams.

The 1950s brought Pittsburgh's first renaissance.

The city created a new future for itself by beginning to clean up the environment, making it a more habitable place to live.

In keeping with the times, the Pennsylvania College for Women changed its name to Chatham College in acknowledgment of Pittsburgh's namesake, William Pitt, the Earl of Chatham.

There was a tremendous lot of transformation during the 50s at Chatham.

The new buildings up in the Quadrangle were being built and the school was growing tremendously from 200 and 400 to 600 students.

The 1960s and 1970s were times of huge social change in the country.

Protests against the war in Vietnam, a rising sense of social justice, the civil rights movement, the new women's movement, all were impacting.

And Chatham coped very well with that.

It was in the air at Chatham to be involved.

We weren't an ivory tower in any way.

I think Chatham, as a university, provided us the ability during those difficult times.

It was a time when women at Chatham were encouraged to use their brain.

And you were applauded for speaking out in class.

When protests erupted in North Carolina around lunch counter segregation, Chatham students marched carrying signs identifying themselves as Chatham students and saying that they were opposed to discrimination and they were opposed to racial segregation.

It was 1969, segregated South, Virginia, and I wanted to go to college.

I went to see the guidance counselor, and I said, I want to go to college.

I need some help because someday I want to become a doctor.

And she said, Lynette, now you may be able to get in one of those Negro colleges, but no medical school is going to take a colored girl.

And she refused to help me.

But somehow, the admissions director of Chatham found me, sent me a bus ticket, and had me come up to interview.

And I still remember, as we were driving up, that right turn from Fifth Avenue onto Woodland Road.

It was as though my life had gone from black and white to Technicolor.

My whole life has been look at me.

Don't look at my color.

Just look at me.

When I open my mouth, know that I am speaking my truth.

That's what Chatham did for me.

The tumultuous 60s and 70s brought new trends in higher education, and Chatham Presidents Edward Eddie and Alberta Arthurs responded with innovations like the Gateway Program, which opened doors for nontraditional students to come and complete their degrees.

It was a gateway for women to reenter education.

Women who may have gotten married when they were in college or began to raise a family, and they wanted their education to be a fulfillment as well.

I was married and had two children, so I had two little boys when I came back to school.

You probably need a little bit more help from your professors than when you're younger.

I liked Chatham because it was accessible as a gateway student.

I felt very grateful to them for what they gave me.

And what I was able to do for the rest of my life.

While the 1980s saw significant progress in women's education and presence in the workforce, it was also a time of financial hardship and uncertainty about the future of women's colleges.

We saw some serious challenges in enrollment.

The transition that many men's colleges made to co-education drew a lot of students who would normally have come to women's colleges away.

I think that the numbers at that point were something like 4% of women will consider attending a women's college.

4%.

4%.

That's like this much.

Institutions were closing.

It was a scary time for many of us.

We had lots of calls from universities and colleges in the region saying, Jane, if you're interested in selling, let me know.

Because people wanted our land and I would say, no, I'll call you.

But no, that's not where we're going.

So things were looking very poorly at that point in time, and it became really clear that we needed to make a change.

Change was in the air.

Change was something that we all lived and breathed.

And I think part of what we were able to do as a community is embrace those possibilities for change sometimes even that we didn't understand.

We found someone who we thought was a risk taker, who was bright, who was smart, who was an academic, who was a leader.

And Doctor Barazzone stepped up to the plate, took on a lot more than she probably knew she was going to have to, and just, piece by piece, began to put a story together of how we could build a future here.

Part of what made Chatham a survivor is there's a long tradition of innovation, of change, of rethinking the future and making a difference.

With President Esther Barazzone at the helm, Chatham College headed into the 21st century, an era that would prompt the greatest innovations in its history and propel the institution into the future.

When I first walked onto the Chatham campus, people were excited to have some change, were excited to create change.

When President Barazzone came in January of 1992, she immediately began to mobilize the campus to consider ways in which we could change, innovate, and become more sustainable.

That was the future.

She put the university on the map.

She was well integrated into the educational and cultural setting in Pittsburgh, and she was a very good leader and a very good spokesperson for Chatham.

With the addition of graduate programs and a new campus for health sciences intended to boost enrollment and help preserve the tradition of the women's college, Chatham continued to be a place where women discovered and challenged themselves in the classroom, on the playing field, and abroad.

The health sciences were the initial programs that we decided to create for a couple reasons.

Sciences have always been strong at Chatham, and of course it's remained strong because it is a high demand professional area.

Chatham became a university, and in 2008, Chatham underwent the largest physical expansion in its history with the acquisition of the Eden Hall campus.

Previously the home of Sebastian Mueller and the Natural Retreat Center for women employed by the H.J.

Heinz Company, the property was donated to Chatham by the Eden Hall Foundation for its continued dedication to the advancement of women, and the preservation of our most precious resource.

The environment is the major issue of our time.

Sustaining the environment, sustaining social justice, and the economics that link the two, it's the future.

It's the only campus in the world built sustainably from the ground up to Leed Platinum Standards, processes its own water, produces much of its own energy, grows much of its own food.

People are completely wowed by the thinking that's in this campus when they go there.

Sustainability is basically systems.

Do one thing in one area, it's going to affect someplace else.

At the Falk School of Sustainability and Environment, we're teaching the interrelationship between those elements.

After 2008, we had grown the undergraduate population to I think a little over 800.

With the financial crisis, it became clear that there was just really a limit to how far we could go.

And so co-education was a very crucial decision for Chatham, but it was also a very, very difficult decision.

It was somber.

I remember the class of 201’s graduation, closing out the chapter of the Chatham College for Women.

Then 2016, everyone's kind of like holding their breath, like, how is this going to turn out?

Everyone's here.

We're coed.

Things went smoothly.

We did it in a way that really honored the mission to women and to gender difference by leaving programs and structures that would continue to support women's empowerment and leadership.

Chatham has always been part of this conversation.

We understand gender in more intersectional ways, but it is more about recognizing the ways in which race, gender, ethnicity, class, the environment, all come together in a moment to produce one's identity.

When we actually made the jump to being coed, it wasn't as big a leap as we thought it was going to be.

We've always respected individuals, whatever gender they might be.

What we value is who they are.

After fulfilling one of the longest presidential tenures in Chatham's history.

Esther Barazzone passed the torch to President David Feingold, leaving a university energized for the future.

The more I learned about the institution, the more I was really excited by the opportunity at Chatham.

He is everywhere, clad in purple.

He is Chatham's biggest fan.

Chatham is an unusual place in that we're a small institution, but we actually have all of the elements of large research universities.

Chatham has always been changing, and change is inevitable.

Looking back at all of the years and iterations and eras that we've gone through in terms of political climates and the transition that Pittsburgh as a city has made, Chatham has been on the cutting edge of what that change looks like.

Chatham has a great opportunity to look across a lot of issue areas and the ideologies, and on both sides of the aisle, and to focus on the issues that change our nation by changing families, blocks, neighborhoods and towns one at a time.

These are hard times, but these are also good times at Chatham.

Because what Chatham has accomplished in that 150 years is the ability to prove to itself that though it is a small, medium-sized institution in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, it can have a reach that is far beyond that.

And it can have an agility, a relevance, a resilience that can take it into the future.

As we look out to the next 150 years, we have a chance to leverage a truly unique set of assets to build a distinctive, world class institution which is known for an outstanding liberal arts core and our university-wide focus on the challenges that we are facing as a planet to build the leaders that can make a better future for ourselves, but also for our kids and the generations to come.

The essence of Chatham, starting with Pennsylvania Female College, Pennsylvania College for Women, Chatham College, Chatham University, the essence of what Chatham is is still here, and everyone who believes in this school will make sure that Chatham is around for another 150 years.