Mary Washington College
Mary Washington College (MWC or Mary Wash for short) is a coed, state-funded, four-year liberal arts college in Fredericksburg, Virginia about 50 miles north of Richmond and 50 miles south of Washington, DC. MWC has about 3500 students and is about 70% female.Founded in 1908 as an all-girls school, MWC is named for Mary Washington, mother of the first president of the United States of America, George Washington. Most of the architecture on the Mary Washington College campus can be described as neo-classical, Georgian, or Jeffersonian (because of its similarity to Thomas Jefferson's design of the University of Virginia).
Academic departments at MWC include Art and Art history; Economics; Historic Preservation; Political Science and International Affairs; Biological Sciences; Education; History and American Studies; Psychology; Business Administration; English, Linguistics, and Speech; Mathematics; Sociology and Anthropology; Chemistry; Environmental science and Geology; Modern Foreign Languages; Theatre and Dance; Classics, Philosophy, and Religion; Geography; Music; Computer science; Health and Physical education; and Physics.
In 2003, MWC was in the process of moving to university status to simplify and streamline administration of the MWC campus and its graduate/professional school, the James Monroe Center for Graduate and Professional Studies. Nominees for naming the new university include "Mary Washington University," "University of Mary Washington," and "Washington and Monroe University."
The name has been a source of controversy for many years. The current President, William Anderson, has attempted to change it before. Failing in the previous tries. One major point of contention is whether or not the name fails to attact men to the college. The student body has rallied against the name change, but does support dropping the word "college" from the name and replacing it with "university."
On Saturday , November 22, 2003 the board voted to change the name to "University of Mary Washington". A formal recognition of this change will be done by the Virginia General Assembly in the spring. The name change will take place for the Fall 2004 semester.
