ABSTRACT

This chapter explains Grace Hoadley Dodge, a founding trustee and treasurer of Teachers College, Columbia University and Elsie Clews Parsons, a patron-scholar of Columbia anthropology, uses the lens of philanthropy to provide new perspectives on the permeable nature of the university’s boundaries. Blending institutional history and biography, it examines the ways benefaction and service became avenues for women’s meaningful participation in institution- and discipline-building at a paradigm-setting university. The chapter aims to contribute to the existing literature in three areas: the history of higher education, the history of philanthropy, and the history of women in education. It seeks to broaden our understanding of the university and its boundaries by studying the enduring and meaningful ties women were able to achieve and sustain to institutions of higher learning through philanthropy. Educational philanthropy was an avenue by which women might pursue and promote personal, intellectual, and social goals.