Vassar College

Overview

Vassar College

Vassar College is a private liberal arts college located in Poughkeepsie, New York. It was established in 1861 by philanthropist Matthew Vassar. It is the first elite women's college in the country. Its notable course offerings include visual and performing arts, social sciences, and biological and biomedical sciences.

Vassar College Key Statistics

The college comprises 30 departments including the Athletics and Physical Education Department, and the Mathematics and Statistics Department, and the Earth Science and Geography Department. It offers more than 30 undergraduate courses and one graduate program. Some of its most sought-after undergraduate programs include Bachelor in Earth Science and Society and Bachelor in Science, Technology, and Society.

Vassar College's student population is approximately 2,435. All of whom are undergraduate students. It has 340 employees including faculty members.

Other Vassar College key statistics include several libraries such as the Martha Rivers and E. Bronson Ingram Library, the Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library, and the George Sherman Dickinson Music Library. These libraries have a total collection of over one million volumes including 50,000 rare book volumes, at least 500 archival and manuscript collections, and access to 70,000 newspaper titles. In addition, they also manage numerous video and audiovisual collections like over 15,000 video recordings, 30,000 sound recordings, and more than 25,000 musical scores.

The college also operates the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center that has over 21,000 paintings, drawings, photographs, and artworks. The gallery also houses significant collections of various materials including the works of famous European masters like Picasso, Gustave Doré, and Cézanne.

Vassar College Research

The college conducts primarily student research and faculty-mentored scientific studies, with physics, astrophysics, and computer science as its top fields of research. Funding support comes from internal and external sources, including the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, the International Research and Exchanges Board, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Vassar College research outputs have been published in prestigious journals like The Astrophysical Journal, and arXiv: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, and Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Its researchers have attended major scholarly conferences such as CVPR: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, ICRA: International Conference on Robotics and Automation, and LREC: Language Resources and Evaluation.

The most cited Vassar College research publication is Boyer et al.'s (2005) "Core transcriptional regulatory circuitry in human embryonic stem cells." This was published in Cell and has so far been cited 5,109 times.

The college’s second most cited publication is Lee et al.'s (2006) "Control of developmental regulators by Polycomb in human embryonic stem cells," which was featured in Cell and has received 2,561 citations.

Moreover, the college’s third most cited publication is Tugade et al.'s (2004) "Psychological resilience and positive emotional granularity: Examining the benefits of positive emotions on coping and health,” which was published in the Journal of Personality with 2,009 citations.

The college has several research centers and institutes. These include the Environmental Research Institute, the Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium, and the Learning, Teaching, and Research Center.

You can also learn more about the educational performance of Vassar College in our ranking of US universities & colleges.