2PAR@ ` TEXT ` Mead, Elizabeth Storrs Billings1832╨1917educatorBorn on May 21, 1832, in Conway, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Billings grew up there, in Trenton, New York, and in Andover, Massachusetts. She attended the Ipswich Female Seminary (founded by Zilpah Grant) and then became a teacher, first for a year in the high school in Northampton, Massachusetts, and then in a girls╒ school conducted by herself and a sister in Andover. In August 1858 she married the Reverend Hiram Mead, with whom she settled in South Hadley, Massachusetts. They later moved to Nashua, New Hampshire, and in 1869 to Oberlin, Ohio, where Reverend Mead was professor of theology in Oberlin College. After his death in 1881 Elizabeth Mead taught English in the college for two years and then moved back to Andover to become associate principal of Abbott Academy. In April 1890, while visiting Rome during an extended European vacation, Mead was invited to become first president of the recently rechartered Mount Holyoke Seminary and College. She accepted and took office in the autumn of that year. Under her energetic leadership the curriculum was broadened to include music, Hebrew, and other new subjects, an organized sports program was instituted, and the conduct of social life was liberalized. Academic standards were raised, uniform entrance requirements were established, and in her ten years the enrollment more than doubled to 600. A new charter granted in January 1893 eliminated the seminary department and renamed the school Mount Holyoke College. A fire in September 1896 that destroyed the main college building provided an opportunity for Mead to restructure the college radically. A highly successful fund-raising campaign made possible the construction of five new small dormitories, to be operated on the ╥cottage plan╙ with resident faculty members as counselors, and a new administrative building. By 1900 a gymnasium, an arts building, a sixth dormitory, and a health cottage were built. Mead submitted her resignation in 1899 but remained in the presidency until her successor, Mary E. Woolley, was ready to take charge in January 1901. She lived thereafter in Oberlin, Ohio, and died in Coconut Grove, Florida, on March 25, 1917. George Herbert Mead (1863╨1931), philosopher and psychologist, was her son. ╓styl `
