Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
Overview
Bryn Mawr is a liberal arts college for women with two coeducational graduate schools: the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research. Bryn Mawr was the first women's college in the U.S. to offer the Ph.D. to women in 1888, and graduate education continues to be a significant part of its mission. Total enrollment is more than 1,625 students, of whom 1,232 are undergraduates.
Total enrollment in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is 173, including 119 women and 54 men. Ten percent of students are international; 40 percent are full-time; 72 percent receive some form of financial aid, including 42 percent who receive a stipend. Programs range in size from 2 to 35 students; the largest program is history of art, followed by clinical developmental psychology.
Of Ph.D. graduates in the past five years, 80 percent of those in science are employed in the field of their degree, about evenly divided between academic and commercial/industrial positions. In the humanities, 50 to 80 percent are employed in their fields; occupations include college and university teachers, museum curators, editors, and academic or foundation administrators.
The Location and Community
Bryn Mawr is a suburb of Philadelphia, the fifth-largest city in the U.S. It is well served by rail lines (the Main Line) and by bus. Philadelphia is renowned for music, museums, and sports, and is also a culinary mecca with restaurants serving many cuisines. The metropolitan area has more than 100 museums and fifty colleges and universities, with a total population of approximately 220,000 students.
Programs of Study and Degree Requirements
Bryn Mawr's Ph.D. programs prepare candidates for academic and research careers in colleges and universities, museums, foundations, government agencies, and private enterprise. Graduates of the program in clinical developmental psychology are also prepared for counseling and for school and hospital administration. The Ph.D. is offered in chemistry; classical and Near Eastern archaeology; clinical developmental psychology; Greek, Latin, and classical studies; history of art; mathematics; physics; and Russian. The M.A. program in French prepares students for the best American Ph.D. programs as well as for teaching and many other professions using French.
A full-time course load is 3 units (courses) per semester; 6 units are required for the M.A. and 12 for the Ph.D. The M.A. can be earned in one or two years. Ph.D. preliminary examinations are normally taken in the fourth or fifth year, followed by two to three years on the dissertation. The program in clinical developmental psychology follows a slightly different schedule and requires 18 units for completion.
Bryn Mawr is both teaching and research intensive. The science programs offer particularly close mentoring in both teaching and research and are well suited to students who aim for a teaching career. The College's small scale and informality guarantee easy access to faculty members and facilitate participation in the academic offerings of other departments. Students typically take an active role in the design of their program of courses and their research. Good writing skills, independence, and originality are prized in all programs.
Facilities & Resources
Bryn Mawr's libraries, comprising the Mariam Coffin Canaday Library, the Lois and Reginald Collier Science Library, and the Rhys Carpenter Library, contain well over 1 million volumes and provide access to more than 3,000 electronic serials. Rhys Carpenter Library, with 125,000 volumes, is a specialized library for archaeology, classics, and the history of art and architecture. Carpenter Library has 103 networked carrels for students as well as classrooms and a visual resource center.
Laboratory and other research facilities in the Park Science complex include the following for biochemistry: a cold room, centrifuges, UV and fluorescence spectrophotometers, and facilities for working with radioisotopes. Labs are well equipped with gel electrophoresis and thermal cyclers for molecular biological manipulations. Inorganic chemistry facilities include a Vacuum Atmospheres single dry box equipped with oxygen analyzer and refrigerator; four Schlenk-type inert atmosphere vacuum lines; a BioAnalytical Systems CV-100 voltammetric analyzer with a Gateway Pentium 266 PC, including DigiSim simulation software; and a BioAnalytical Systems CV-27 voltammetric analyzer.
The Photo-Physics Laboratory houses three optical tables; three Nd:YAG pump lasers; two commercial, tunable dye lasers; two auto-tracking harmonic crystal systems; a differentially pumped vacuum chamber with two supersonic pulsed valves to produce molecular beams and time-of-flight mass and fluorescence detection capabilities; and a suite of computerized data acquisition equipment.
The Ultracold Rydberg Atom Laboratory houses three optical tables, a rubidium magnetooptical trap, a pulsed Nd:YAG laser pumping several dye lasers, a mode-locked and q-switched Nd:YAG laser, a high-vacuum atomic beam system, and a computerized data acquisition system.
Expenses and Aid
Full-time tuition, which consists of six courses per year, is $29,520; part-time tuition is $4920 per course. Units of supervised work cost $720, and the fee for maintaining matriculation (continuing enrollment) is $350 per semester.
Financial Aid:
Bryn Mawr offers fellowships and teaching assistantships for full-time study, as well as grants, tuition awards, and summer stipends. Fellowship stipends range from $13,000 to $15,500 and can be guaranteed for up to four years. Assistantship stipends are $14,500, including a health insurance subsidy. Summer stipends range from $2000 to $4000. The Marguerite N. Farley Fellowship is reserved for students who come from outside the U.S. and carries a stipend of $14,564. There are also special Dean's Fellowships for members of underrepresented American minorities.
Housing/Living Expenses:
Students live locally or in Philadelphia. Shared apartments can be rented for $500 to $900 per month; food costs are about $100 per month. Other expenses include transportation, which is approximately $100 per month if living in Philadelphia, and health insurance, which is $1770 per year.
How to Apply / Application
The deadline for application for admission with financial aid is January 15. Applications for admission without aid are accepted up to June 30, 2005. GRE scores, a writing sample, and three letters of recommendation are required. Nonnative speakers of English must submit a TOEFL score (minimum 600, paper-based; 250, computer-based). Other requirements vary by department.
Who to Contact
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Thomas Library
Bryn Mawr College
101 North Merion Avenue
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania 19010-2899
610-526-5072
E-mail: gsas@brynmawr.edu
The Graduate Programs and Faculty
Chemistry
• Sharon J. Nieter Burgmayer, Professor; Ph.D., North Carolina, 1984. Inorganic and bioinorganic chemistry: the role of transition metals in enzymes.
• Michelle M. Francl, Professor; Ph.D., California, Irvine, 1983. Physical chemistry, computational chemistry and molecular architecture.
• William Malachowski, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Michigan, 1993. Synthetic organic chemistry, peptidomimetic synthesis, development of new asymmetric synthetic methods.
• Frank B. Mallory, Professor; Ph.D., Caltech, 1958. Organic chemistry, photochemistry and clear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.
• Susan A. White, Associate Professor and Chair; Ph.D., Johns Hopkins, 1988. Biochemistry, biochemical studies of RNA and RNA-protein interactions.
Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology
• Mehmet-Ali Ataç, Research Associate; Ph.D., Harvard, 2003. Visual and intellectual traditions of the ancient Near East; neo-Assyrian iconography, Near Eastern and Egyptian kingship.
• A. A. Donohue, Associate Professor; Ph.D., NYU, 1984. History and historiography of classical art.
• Peter Magee, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Sydney, 1996. Archaeology of South Asia, Iran, and Arabia; field methods; materials analysis.
• Stella Miller-Collett, Professor; Ph.D., Bryn Mawr, 1971. Greek art and archaeology, ancient painting and mosaics.
• James C. Wright, Professor and Chair; Ph.D., Bryn Mawr, 1978. Prehistory of the Aegean basin, settlement forms and architecture of classical Greece, theory and method.
Clinical Developmental Psychology
• Kimberly Wright Cassidy, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Pennsylvania, 1993. Cognition and education, children's theory of mind, phonological/prosodic aspects of language, children's understanding of literature.
• Clark R. McCauley, Professor; Ph.D., Pennsylvania, 1970. Social cognition, individual differences, health psychology, stereotype.
• Leslie Rescorla, Professor and Chair; Ph.D., Yale, 1976. Preschool language development and language delay, child psychiatric disorders, ability and achievement in schoolchildren.
• Marc Schulz, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Berkeley, 1994. Marital relationships and their effects on children, family child-rearing environments, work stress and its impact on family life, emotion regulation in adolescents and adults.
• Anjali Thapar, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Case Western Reserve, 1994. Cognitive psychology.
• Earl Thomas, Professor; Ph.D., Yale, 1967. Neurobiology and psychopharmacology, animal models of psychopathology.
• Robert H. Wozniak, Professor; Ph.D., Michigan, 1971. Developmental theory, history of psychology, speech regulation of action, family belief systems.
French
• Koffi Anyinéfa, Associate Professor at Haverford College and Chair; Ph.D., Bayreuth (Germany), 1989. Francophone African and Caribbean literature.
• Grace M. Armstrong, Professor; Ph.D., Princeton, 1973. Medieval French literature, feminist studies, narrative techniques.
• Francis Higginson, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Berkeley, 1997. Twentieth-century French and Francophone literature, critical theory.
• Natasha Lee, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Harvard, 2003. Eighteenth-century literature and culture.
• Brigitte Mahuzier, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Cornell, 1988. Narrative and poetry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; feminist, gender, and queer theory; visual arts and aesthetic theory.
• David Sedley, Assistant Professor at Haverford College; Ph.D., Princeton, 1999. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature, critical theory.
Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies
• Catherine Conybeare, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Toronto, 1997. Late antique and early medieval Latin prose, cultural history, critical theory.
• Radcliffe Edmonds, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Chicago, 1999. Greek myth, Greco-Roman religion and magic, Greek philosophy.
• Julia H. Gaisser, Professor; Ph.D., Edinburgh, 1966. Republican and Augustan Latin poetry, reception, history of classical scholarship.
• Richard Hamilton, Professor; Ph.D., Michigan, 1971. Greek lyric poetry, Greek drama, Greek religion.
• Russell T. Scott, Professor and Chair; Ph.D., Yale, 1964. Roman history and historiography, Latin literature, Roman archaeology.
History of Art
• David J. Cast, Professor and Chair; Ph.D., Columbia, 1970. Renaissance art and criticism, architecture post-1400, twentieth-century British art.
• Christiane Hertel, Professor; Ph.D., Tübingen (Germany), 1985. German, Austrian, and Netherlandish art and architecture; German intellectual history; aesthetics and art theory.
• Homay King, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Berkeley, 2003. American film history; film, feminist, psychoanalytic, and rhetorical theory.
• Dale Kinney, Professor; Ph.D., NYU, 1975. Late antique and medieval Italian art, medieval architecture, spolia.
• Steven Z. Levine, Professor; Ph.D., Harvard, 1974. Sixteenth-to-twentieth-century French painting, psychoanalysis, self-portraiture, visual theory.
• Gridley McKim-Smith, Professor; Ph.D., Harvard, 1974. Seventeenth-century Spanish painting and sculpture, scientific analysis of works of art, costume.
• Lisa Saltzman, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Harvard, 1994. Post-World War II art and theory, gender and identity, memory and trauma.
Mathematics
• Leslie C. Cheng, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Pittsburgh, 1998. Fourier analysis on euclidean spaces, oscillatory integrals, singular integrals, Hardy spaces.
• Victor J. Donnay, Professor; Ph.D., NYU, 1986. Dynamical systems, ergodic theory, differential geometry.
• Helen G. Grundman, Professor and Chair; Ph.D., Berkeley, 1989. Algebra, algebraic number theory, analytic number theory.
• Rhonda Hughes, Professor; Ph.D., Illinois, 1975. Functional analysis, harmonic and wavelet analysis, operator theory.
• Paul M. Melvin, Professor; Ph.D., Berkeley, 1977. Algebraic and differential topology, low-dimensional manifolds, quantum topology.
• Lisa Traynor, Associate Professor; Ph.D., SUNY at Stony Brook, 1992. Symplectic topology, contact geometry, differential geometry and topology.
Physics
• Alfonso M. Albano, Professor; Ph.D., SUNY at Stony Brook, 1969. Nonlinear dynamics.
• Peter A. Beckmann, Professor; Ph.D., British Columbia, 1985. Chemical physics, condensed-matter physics.
• Elizabeth F. McCormack, Associate Professor and Chair; Ph.D., Yale, 1989. Atomic, molecular, and optical physics.
• Michael W. Noel, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Rochester, 1996. Atomic, molecular, and optical physics.
Russian
• Elizabeth C. Allen, Professor and Chair; Ph.D., Yale, 1984. Nineteenth-century Russian and European literature, literary periodization, literary theory.
• Richard Brecht, Visiting Professor; Ph.D., Harvard, 1972. Second-language acquisition, Russian linguistics, Old Church Slavonic.
• Dan E. Davidson, Professor; Ph.D., Harvard, 1972. Second-language acquisition, international language policy, Russian linguistics.
• Linda G. Gerstein, Professor at Haverford College; Ph.D., Harvard, 1966. Russian history, modern European history, history of Russian art and architecture.
• Timothy C. Harte, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Harvard, 2001. Russian avant-garde literature and painting, Russian and Soviet film, contemporary Russian culture.
• George S. Pahomov, Professor; Ph.D., NYU, 1973. Nineteenth-century Russian literature, Russian drama, Russian culture.