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Bryn Mawr College president Martha Carey Thomas, circa 1895.
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Sepia photograph, head and shoulders

Credit: Special Collections Department, Bryn Mawr College

A staunch feminist from a progressive Quaker family, Martha Carey Thomas (1857-1935) became the dean of Bryn Mawr in 1884–the first female dean in the United States–and the first female president of the college in 1894. Putting her activist beliefs into practice, Thomas opened Bryn Mawr's Graduate Social Work School in 1916, and in 1921, working with Bryn Mawr Dean Hilda Worthington Smith, opened the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers to broaden adult working women's educational and social opportunities in the industrial age.

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