Women's colleges in N.J. look to define same-sex education
By Kelly Heyboer/ The Star-Ledger
March 28, 2010, 8:15AM
Jessica Ringo’s grandmother went to the College of Saint Elizabeth. So did her mother and two aunts. But when Ringo decided to enroll at the private women’s college in Morris County a few years ago, her friends at Phillipsburg High School looked at her like she was crazy.
An all-women’s college? In the 21st century? Really?
Students, from left, Tatiana Pereira, Zuleina Molina, Deanna Thomas and Christena Ibrahim at the College of Saint Elizabeth, one of nearly 50 U.S. colleges that admit only women.
“My friends made fun of me,” said Ringo, 23. “They asked, ‘Why a women’s college? Why do you just want to be around women?’ ”
Ringo, who graduated from the College of Saint Elizabeth last year, now works for the campus’s marketing department developing ways to sell women’s colleges to a new generation of students. It isn’t easy, she says.
Nationwide, the number of women’s colleges has fallen by nearly 80 percent since the 1960s as most of the schools have either gone co-ed or closed. The nearly 50 that are left — including New Jersey’s College of Saint Elizabeth and Georgian Court University —say they are committed to staying women’s colleges.
But in an era when female students outnumber men on U.S. college campuses, women’s colleges are looking for ways to redefine same-sex education for the 21st century.
“It’s not women-only, it’s women-centered,” said Susan Lennon, president of the Women’s College Coalition, a Connecticut-based association representing nearly all of the nation’s remaining women’s colleges.