Marion Edwards Park


Marion Edwards Park was the American alumna and the third president of Bryn Mawr College, following alumna M. Carey Thomas.

Biography

Park was born in Gloversville, New York in 1875. Her brother, Dr. E. A. Park was head of the department of pediatrics at Yale University.
During her tenure as a student at Bryn Mawr College, she received the Bryn Mawr European Fellowship and used it to attend the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece. Park presided over the college during the Great Depression and the beginning of World War II, where she worked with other colleges to employ refugee scholars from European universities. Park was also instrumental in initiating cross-institution collaboration between Bryn Mawr College, Haverford College, Swarthmore College, and the University of Pennsylvania.
She died in 1960.

Quotes

"Within its narrow classrooms the college must see to it that she is taught with breadth of view, and not only in so-called safe subjects, but in so-called dangerous subjects, in economics and history and psychology and religion; taught with sincerity which will call out sincerity in her; with imagination which will create for her a true and breathing picture of the world she is to meet; and with liberty of spirit which will make her all through her life demand ceaselessly for herself and others the same quickening air."—Marion Edwards Park, 1922
"The college must educate for a changing world... about which we know only that it will be different from anything of which we have now had experience." — Marion Edwards Park, 1933

Publications

"The plebs in Cicero's day, a study of their provenance and of their employment"