Mills College
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Mills College is a private women's liberal arts college located in Oakland, California, USA. It has played an important role in modern American music through its post-graduate program in experimental music.
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History
Mills was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary at Benicia in 1852. In 1865, missionaries Cyrus and Susan Mills purchased the seminary, and in 1871 they relocated it to a new campus in the East Bay foothills in Oakland. In 1889, Mills became the first college to grant Bachelor of Arts degrees to women west of the Mississippi River. In 1921, Mills granted its first master's degrees.
Notable faculty members include Dean Rusk, who taught at Mills from 1934 to 1940, and composer Arthur Berger.
In 1990, with enrollment declining, trustees announced a plan to open Mills' undergraduate programs to men. Students mounted a vigorous protest in defense of its 138-year history as a women's college, attracting national news coverage and support from women's colleges across the United States. Later that same year, the trustees reversed their position and "reaffirmed Mills' commitment" to remain a single-sex undergraduate institution.
Academics
Mills was the first women's college to offer a degree in computer science, beginning in 1974. It has recently added a new professional business school and is in the process of a feasibility study for a new law school.
Mills College's post-graduate program is co-educational, and is noted for being at the forefront of experimental music study and composition. Well-known composer Luciano Berio was on the music faculty of Mills in 1962-1964, and Pauline Oliveros was the first director of The Tape Music Center (1966-1967), where she composed her electronic works Alien Bog and Beautiful Soop. Morton Subotnick received his master's degree from Mills, studying composition with Leon Kirchner and Darius Milhaud. Laurie Anderson, Dave Brubeck, and Steve Reich attended the program, as well as the famous synthesizer designer Donald Buchla. Terry Riley taught at Mills starting in the early 1970s.
Famous alumnae and alumni
- Laurie Anderson
- Sofia Coppola
- March Fong Eu
- Olivia de Havilland
- April Glaspie
- Joanna Newsom
- Steve Reich
- Jade Snow Wong
- Dana Vespoli
Points of interest
External link
- Mills College official website (http://www.mills.edu/)