Reed College

Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at its center.

Referred to as one of "the most intellectual colleges in the country", Reed is known for its mandatory first-year humanities program, senior thesis, progressive politics, de-emphasis on grades, academic rigor, grade deflation, and unusually high proportion of graduates who go on to earn doctorates and other postgraduate degrees. The college has many prominent alumni, including over a hundred Fulbright Scholars, 67 Watson Fellows, and three Churchill Scholars; its 32 Rhodes Scholars are the second-highest count for a liberal arts college. Reed is ranked fourth in the United States for all postsecondary institutions for the percentage of its graduates who go on to earn a Ph.D., after Caltech, Harvey Mudd, and Swarthmore College.

History

The Reed Institute (the legal name of the college) was founded in 1908 and held its first classes in 1911. Reed is named for Oregon pioneers Simeon Gannett Reed (1830–1895) and Amanda Reed (died 1904). Simeon was an entrepreneur involved in several enterprises, including trade on the Willamette and Columbia Rivers with his close friend and associate, former Portland Mayor William S. Ladd (for whom Ladd's Addition is named). Unitarian minister Thomas Lamb Eliot, who knew the Reeds from the church choir, is credited with convincing Reed of the need for "a lasting legacy, a 'Reed Institute of Lectures,' and joked it would 'need a mine to run it.'" Reed's will suggested his wife could "devote some portion of my estate to benevolent objects, or to the cultivation, illustration, or development of the fine arts in the city of Portland, or to some other suitable purpose, which shall be of permanent value and contribute to the beauty of the city and to the intelligence, prosperity, and happiness of the inhabitants". Ladd's son, William Mead Ladd, donated 40 acres from the Ladd Estate Company to build the new college. Reed's first president (1910–1919) was William Trufant Foster, a former professor at Bates College and Bowdoin College in Maine. Prior to coming to Reed, Foster wrote that his ideal college would be one that "combats laziness, superficiality, dissipation, excessive indulgence in college life, by making the moral and intellectual requirements an honest, sustained, and adequate challenge to the best powers of the best American youth."

Contrary to popular belief, the college did not grow out of student revolts and experimentation, but out of a desire to provide a "more flexible, individualized approach to a rigorous liberal arts education". Founded explicitly in reaction to the "prevailing model of East Coast, Ivy League education", the college's lack of varsity athletics, fraternities, and exclusive social clubs– as well as its coeducational, nonsectarian, and egalitarian status—gave way to an intensely academic and intellectual college whose purpose was to devote itself to "the life of the mind"—the academic life— rather than a social or fraternal one.

During the 1930s, President Dexter Keezer became very concerned about what he considered to be dishonorable behavior at Reed, primarily the fraternization among male and female students and the consumption of alcohol by students. A large portion of the Student Council even took the position that Oregon's liquor laws did not apply to Reed's campus. Policies restricting the ability of students from visiting the dormitories of the opposite sex were fiercely resisted.

After World War II the college saw its enrollment numbers dramatically increase as veterans began enrolling in the college.

The college has developed a reputation for the political progressivism of its student body.

Distinguishing features

According to sociologist Burton Clark, Reed is one of the most unusual institutions of higher learning in the United States, featuring a traditional liberal arts and natural sciences curriculum. It requires freshmen to take Humanities 110, an intensive introduction to multidisciplinary inquiry, covering ancient Greece and Rome, the Hebrew Bible and ancient Jewish history, and as of 2019, Ancient Mesoamerica and the Harlem Renaissance. Reed also has a TRIGA research reactor on campus, making it the only school in the United States to have a nuclear reactor operated primarily by undergraduates. Reed also requires all students to complete a thesis (a two-semester-long research project conducted under the guidance of professors) during the senior year as a prerequisite of graduation. Upon completion of the senior thesis, students must also pass an oral defense of ninety minutes related to the thesis topic and how the thesis relates to the larger context of the student's studies.

Reed maintains a 9:1 student-to-faculty ratio, and its small classes emphasize a "conference" style where the professor often acts as a mediator for discussion rather than a lecturer. While large lecture-style classes exist, Reed emphasizes its smaller lab and conference sections.

Although letter grades are given to students, grades are de-emphasized at Reed and focus is placed on a narrative evaluation. According to the school, "a conventional letter grade for each course is recorded for every student, but the registrar's office does not distribute grades to students, provided that work continues at satisfactory (C or higher) levels. Unsatisfactory grades are reported directly to the student and the student's adviser. Papers and exams are generally returned to students with lengthy comments but without grades affixed." Students can request copies of their official transcript from the registrar. There is no dean's list or honor roll ''per se'', but students who maintain a GPA of 3.5 or above for an academic year receive academic commendations at the end of the spring semester which are noted on their transcripts. Many Reed students graduate without knowing their cumulative