Reed College
Encyclopedia
Reed College is a private, independent, liberal arts college
located in southeast Portland, Oregon
. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland
neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor
-Gothic
style, and a forested canyon wilderness preserve at its center. Reed is known for its mandatory freshman humanities
program, for its required senior-year thesis, as the only private undergraduate college with a primarily student-run nuclear reactor
supporting its science programs, and for the unusually high proportion of graduates who go on to earn PhDs and other postgraduate degrees.
The Reed Institute (the legal name of the college) was founded in 1908, and Reed College held its first classes in 1911. Reed is named for Oregon pioneers Simeon Gannett Reed
and Amanda Reed. Simeon was an entrepreneur in trade on the Columbia River
; in his will he suggested that his wife could "devote some portion of my estate to benevolent objects, or to the cultivation, illustration, or development of the fine arts in the city of Portland, or to some other suitable purpose, which shall be of permanent value and contribute to the beauty of the city and to the intelligence, prosperity, and happiness of the inhabitants". The first president of Reed (1910–1919) was William Trufant Foster
, a former professor at Bates College
and Bowdoin College
in Maine
.
Contrary to popular belief, the college did not grow out of student revolts and experimentation, but out of a desire to provide a "more flexible, individualized approach to a rigorous liberal arts education". Founded explicitly in reaction to the "prevailing model of East Coast, Ivy League
education," the college's lack of varsity athletics
, fraternities
, and exclusive social clubs – as well as its coeducational, nonsectarian
, and egalitarian
status – gave way to an intensely academic and intellectual college whose purpose was to devote itself to "the life of the mind".
The college holds a reputation for the progressive
and anti-authoritarian leanings of its community.
, covering ancient Greece
and Rome as well as the Bible and ancient Jewish history
. Its program in the sciences is likewise unusual – Reed's TRIGA research reactor
makes it the only school in the United States to have a nuclear reactor
operated entirely by undergraduates. Reed also requires all students to complete a thesis (a two-semester-long research project conducted under the guidance of professors) during the senior year as a prerequisite of graduation, and passing a junior qualifying exam at the end of the junior year is a prerequisite to beginning the thesis. Upon completion of the senior thesis, students must also pass an oral exam that may encompass questions not only about the thesis, but also about any course previously taken.
Reed maintains a 10:1 student-to-faculty ratio, and its small classes emphasize a "conference" style, in which the teacher often acts as a mediator for discussion rather than a lecturer. While large lecture-style classes exist, Reed emphasizes its smaller lab and conference sections.
Although letter grades are given to students, grades are de-emphasized at Reed. According to the school, "[s]tudents are encouraged to focus on learning, not on grades. Students are evaluated rigorously, and semester grades are filed with the registrar, but by tradition, students do not receive standard grade reports. Papers and exams are generally returned to
students with lengthy comments but without grades affixed. There is no dean’s list
or honor roll per se, but students who maintain a GPA of 3.5 or above for an entire academic year receive academic commendations, which are noted on their transcripts, at the end of the spring semester. Many Reedies graduate without knowing either their cumulative GPA
or their grades in individual classes. Reed also claims to have experienced very little grade inflation over the years, noting, for example, that only seven students graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA in the period from 1983 to 2007". (Transcripts are accompanied by a card explaining Reed's relatively tough grading system, so as to not penalize students applying to graduate schools.) And though Reed does not award Latin honors
to graduates, Reed does confer several awards for academic achievement at the time of commencement, including naming students to Phi Beta Kappa.
Reed has no fraternities or sororities, and few NCAA
sports teams, although physical education classes (which range from kayaking
to juggling
) are required for graduation. Reed also has several intercollegiate athletic teams, most notably the Rugby, Fencing, and Ultimate Frisbee teams.
Reed's ethical code is known as "The Honor Principle". First introduced as an agreement to promote ethical academic behavior, with the explicit end of relieving the faculty of the burden of policing student behavior, the Honor Principle was extended to cover all aspects of student life. While inspired by traditional honor system
s, Reed's Honor Principle differs from these in that it is a guide for ethical standards themselves, not just their enforcement. Under the Honor Principle, there are no codified rules governing behavior. Rather, the onus is on students individually and as a community to define which behaviors are acceptable and which are not.
Discrete cases of grievance, known as "Honor Cases", are adjudicated by a Judicial Board, which consists of nine full-time students. There is also an "Honor Council," which consists of students, faculty, and staff, designed to educate the community regarding the Honor Principle and mediate conflict between individuals.
courses, twenty-six department majors, twelve interdisciplinary majors, six dual-degree programs with other colleges and universities, and programs for pre-medical and pre-veterinary students.
Reed's Humanities program includes the mandatory freshman course Introduction to Western Humanities covering ancient Greek
and Roman
literature, history, art, religion, and philosophy. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors may take Early Modern Europe covering Renaissance
thought and literature; Modern Humanities covering the Enlightenment
, the French Revolution
, the Industrial Revolution
, and Modernism
, and/or Foundations of Chinese Civilization. There is also a Humanities Senior Symposium.
Reed offers dual-degree programs
in Computer Science (with University of Washington
), Engineering (with Caltech, Columbia University
, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
), Forestry or Environmental Management (with Duke University
), and Fine Art (with the Pacific Northwest College of Art
).
Until the late 1990s, Reed accepted a larger percentage of total applicants than peer institutions – 76% in 1996. This led to high levels of attrition (drop-outs) during that period. Since then, the number of applicants for freshman admission has increased sharply. Since 2002, Reed's attrition rate has moved toward that of peer institutions, and the five-year graduation rate (76% for the 2004/05 entering class) now exceeds the national average.
In 2009, the applicant pool for the class of 2013 was the third largest in Reed's history: 3,159 students applied and 1,225 were admitted, for an admission rate of 38.8%. The admitted class of 2013's average combined Math and Verbal SAT
scores were 1407; the mean composite ACT score was 31; and the mean high school GPA was 4.034.
Reed's student body is 45% male and 55% female, and includes 22% minority students: 3% self-report as Black (including African-American, African, and Afro-Caribbean); 6% as Hispanic; 9% as Asian, 2% Native American, and 2% Mixed/Other. Minority numbers include some of the 7% international citizens (13% of freshmen did not self-report their ethnicity). In the class of 2010, 38% of students are from the United States's West Coast (California, Oregon, Washington), with the most coming from California.
average of 5.1%.
Reed's endowment as of June 30, 2010 was $358.7 million. Note, however, that in the economic downturn that began in late 2007, Reed's total endowment declined by about 6% from $455 million in June 2007 to $427 million in June 2008, and to $311 million in June 2009. Although it increased by 15.3% from 2009 to 2010, it remained below its 2007 peak value.
Rolling Stone
, in its October 16, 1997 issue, argued that Reed's rankings were artificially decreased by U.S. News after they stopped sending data to U.S. News and World Report. Nicholas Thompson reiterated this judgment in an article in The Washington Monthly in 2000. Reed has also made the same claim. In discussing Reed's decision, President Colin Diver
wrote in an article for the November 2005 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, "by far the most important consequence of sitting out the rankings game, however, is the freedom to pursue our own educational philosophy, not that of some news magazine".
However, in 2005 Reed did submit statistics to The Princeton Review
, and received first in Overall Undergraduate Academic Experience. In 2009, The Princeton Review ranked Reed number two in "Best Classroom Experience", number three in "Students Study the Most", and number five in "Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians". In 2006, Newsweek
' magazine named Reed as one of twenty-five "New Ivies", listing it among "the nation's elite colleges". The guide to college admissions for About.com
, moreover, places Reed as one of the top ten liberal arts colleges in the country.
for any liberal arts college—31—as well as over fifty Fulbright Scholars
, over sixty Watson Fellows, and two MacArthur ("Genius") Award winners. A very high proportion of Reed graduates go on to earn PhDs, particularly in the sciences, history, political science
, and philosophy. Reed is third in percentage of its graduates who go on to earn PhDs in all disciplines, after only Caltech and Harvey Mudd
. In 1961, Scientific American
declared that second only to Caltech, "This small college in Oregon has been far and away more productive of future scientists than any other institution in the U.S." Reed is first in this percentage in biology
, second in chemistry
and humanities
, third in history, foreign language
s, and political science
, fourth in the physical sciences, math and computer science
, and science and engineering, fifth in physics
and social sciences
, sixth in anthropology
, seventh in area and ethnic studies
and linguistics
, and eighth in English literature
and the medical sciences.
Reed's debating team, which had existed for only two years at the time, was awarded the first place sweepstakes trophy for Division II schools at the final tournament of the Northwest Forensics Conference in February 2004.
Loren Pope
, former education editor for The New York Times
, writes about Reed in Colleges That Change Lives
, saying, "If you're a genuine intellectual, live the life of the mind, and want to learn for the sake of learning, the place most likely to empower you is not Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, or Stanford. It is the most intellectual college in the country—Reed in Portland, Oregon".
During the McCarthy era
of the 1950s, then-President Duncan Ballantine fired Marxist philosopher Stanley Moore, a tenured professor, for his failure to cooperate with the HUAC investigation. According to an article in the college's alumni magazine, "because of the decisive support expressed by Reed's faculty, students, and alumni for the three besieged teachers and for the principle of academic freedom, Reed College's experience with McCarthyism stands apart from that of most other American colleges and universities. Elsewhere in the academic world both tenured and untenured professors with alleged or admitted communist party ties were fired with relatively little fuss or protest. At Reed, however, opposition to the political interrogations of the teachers was so strong that some believed the campus was in danger of closure". A statement of "regret" by the Reed administration and Board of Trustees was published in 1981, formally revising the judgment of the 1954 trustees. In 1993, then-President Steve Koblik invited Moore to visit the College, and in 1995 the last surviving member of the Board that fired Moore expressed his regret and apologized to him.
, written by the staff of Yale Daily News
, notes an impression among students of institutional permissiveness: "according to students, the school does not bust students for drug or alcohol use unless they cause harm or embarrassment to another student."
The Reed College campus was established on a southeast Portland
tract of land known in 1910 as Crystal Springs Farm, a part of the Ladd Estate, formed in the 1870s from original land claims. The college's grounds include 116 contiguous acres, including a wooded wetland known as Reed Canyon.
Portland architect A. E. Doyle
developed a plan, never implemented in full, modeled on the University of Oxford's St. John's College
. The original campus buildings (including the Library, the Old Dorm Block, and what is now the primary administration building, Eliot Hall) are brick Tudor Gothic
buildings in a style similar to Ivy League
campuses. In contrast, the science section of campus, including the physics, biology, and psychology (originally chemistry) buildings, were designed in the Modernist
style. The Psychology Building, completed in 1949, was designed by Modernist architect Pietro Belluschi
at the same time as his celebrated Equitable Building in downtown Portland.
The campus and buildings have undergone several phases of growth, and there are now twenty-one academic and administrative buildings and eighteen residence halls. Since 2004, Reed's campus has expanded to include adjacent properties beyond its historic boundaries, such as the Birchwood Apartments complex and former medical administrative offices on either side of SE 28th Avenue, and the Parker House, across SE Woodstock from Prexy. At the same time the Willard House (donated to Reed in 1964), across from the college's main entrance at SE Woodstock and SE Reed College Place, was converted from faculty housing to administrative use. Reed announced on July 13, 2007, that it had purchased the Rivelli farm, a 1.5 acre (0.00607029 km²) tract of land south of the Garden House and west of Botsford Drive. Reed’s "immediate plans for the acquired property include housing a small number of students in the former Rivelli home during the 2007–08 academic year. Longer term, the college anticipates that it may seek to develop the northern portion of the property for additional student housing".
Reed also owns more than a dozen homes adjacent to the campus that are used to house new and visiting faculty.
Reed houses about 1,000 students in 18 residence halls on campus and several college-owned houses and apartment buildings on or adjacent to campus. Residence halls on campus range from the traditional (i.e., Gothic Old Dorm Block, referred to as "ODB") to the eclectic (e.g., Anna Mann, a Tudor-style cottage built in the 1920s by Reed's founding architect A. E. Doyle, originally used as a women's hall,) language houses (Spanish, Russian, French, German, and Chinese), "temporary" housing, built in the 1960s (Cross Canyon – Chittick, Woodbridge, McKinley, Griffin), to more recently built dorms (Bragdon, Naito, Sullivan). There are also theme residence halls including everything from substance-free living to Arabic culture to a dorm for students interested in outdoors activities (hiking, climbing, bicycling, kayaking, skiing, etc.). The college's least-loved complex (as measured by applications to the College's housing lottery), MacNaughton and Foster-Scholz, is known on campus as "Asylum Block" because of its post-World War II modernist architecture and interior spaces dominated by long, straight corridors lined with identical doors, said by students to resemble that of an insane asylum
. Until 2006, it was thought that these residence halls had been designed by architect Pietro Belluschi
.
Under the 10-year Campus Master Plan adopted in 2006, Foster-Scholz is scheduled to be demolished and replaced, and MacNaughton to be remodeled. According to the master plan, "The College's goal is to provide housing on or adjacent to the campus that accommodates 75% of the [full-time] student population. At present, the College provides on-campus housing for 838 students".
In Spring 2007, the College broke ground on the construction of a new quadrangle with four new residence halls on the northwest side of the campus, which opened in Fall 2008. A new Spanish House residence has also been completed. Together, the five new residences add 142 new beds.
The Reed College Canyon, a natural area and national wildlife preserve, bisects the campus, separating the academic buildings from many of the residence halls (the so called cross-canyon halls). The canyon is filled by Crystal Creek Springs, a natural spring
that drains into Johnson Creek.
Canyon Day, a tradition dating back to 1915, is held twice a year. On Canyon Day students and Reed neighbors join canyon crew workers to spend a day helping with restoration efforts.
A landmark of the campus, the Blue Bridge
, spans the canyon. It appears on almost every viewbook that the college circulates. This bridge replaced the unique cantilevered bridge that served in that spot between 1959 and 1991, which "featured stressed plywood girders – the first time this construction had been used on a span of this size: a straight bridge 132 feet (40.2 m) long and 15 feet (4.6 m) high. It attracted great architectural interest during its lifetime". The Blue Bridge was originally known as the "Cross Canyon Bridge" until student Rain Lynham bought and installed black lights in 1998 as decoration for Renn Fayre, the traditional end of year, campus-wide party, of which she was the organizer that year. The new look proved so popular with students and faculty alike that the original white bulbs were never replaced.
A new pedestrian and bicycle bridge spanning the canyon was opened in Fall 2008. This bridge, dubbed the "Bouncy Bridge" by students, is 370 feet (112.8 m) long, about a third longer than the Blue Bridge, and "connect[s] the new north campus quad to Gray Campus Center, the student union, the library, and academic buildings on the south side of campus".
, Al Held
, Marko Lulic and Gregory Crewdson
as well as the contemporary art collection of Michael Ovitz
. In pursuit of its mission to support the curriculum of the art, art history, and humanities programs at Reed, the gallery produces three or four exhibitions each year, along with lectures, colloquia, and artist visits. The gallery is currently under the directorship of Stephanie Snyder, who succeeded founding director Susan Fillin-Yeh in 2004.
, and food is purchased on an item-by-item basis. Suiting the student body, vegan and vegetarian dishes feature heavily on the menu. It is currently the only cafeteria on the small campus, with the exception of Caffe Paradiso, a small cafe on the other side of campus which also accepts board points.
The Reed College Co-op is a theme residence located in Garden House, after many years on the first floor of MacNaughton Hall. It is the only campus dorm that is independent of the school's board plan. This residence houses ten students who purchase and prepare food together, sharing chores and conducting weekly, consensus-based meetings. It is a close community valuing sustainability, organic food, consensus-based decisions, self-government, music, and plants.
The Paradox ("Est. in the 80s") is a student-run cafe located on campus. In 2003 the Paradox opened a second cafe, dubbing it the "Paradox Lost" (an allusion to John Milton
's Paradise Lost
), at the southern end of the biology building, in the space commonly called the "Bio Fishbowl". The new north-campus dorms, which opened in Fall 2008, feature yet another small cafe, dubbed "Cafe Paradiso", thereby providing three coffee shops within a 116 acre (0.46943576 km²) campus. This third shop is not student-run, but is handled instead by an outside catering service.
and Eastmoreland
Portland neighborhoods are traditionally rented to Reed students. Many students traditionally give their houses creative nicknames as well, which can last through multiple cycles of rentership.
. In mythology, the griffin often pulled the chariot of the sun; in canto 32 of Dante
's Commedia the gryphon
is associated with the Tree of Knowledge
. The griffin was featured on the coat-of-arms of founder Simeon Reed and is now on the official seal of Reed College.
." It was composed by former president William Trufant Foster
shortly after Reed's founding, and is rarely heard today.
of Reed is "Communism, Atheism, Free Love", and can be found in the Reed College Bookstore on sweaters, t-shirts, etc. It was a label that the Reed community claimed from critics during the 1920s as a "tongue-in-cheek slogan" in reference to Reed's nonconformism
. Reed's founding president William T. Foster's outspoken opposition against the entrance of the United States into World War I, as well as the college's support for feminism, its adherence to academic freedom (i.e., inviting a leader of the Socialist Party of America
to speak on campus about the Russian Revolution’s potential impact on militarism
, emancipation of women, and ending the persecution of Jews), and its nonsectarian
status made the college a natural target for what was originally meant to be a pejorative slur.
An alternative motto first appeared on shirts in 1976 as "Capitalism, Avarice, Free Beer", but never overtook the original in popularity. A small group of students has recently been petitioning the bookstore to update the shirts' text to read, "Socialism, Agnosticism, Safe Sex", a comment on the increasingly moderate (though still quite radical) predominating values of the student body. Additionally, the punning "Reed: You Might Learn Something" was a popular slogan in the mid-1980s.
Another popular characterization was from a letter to the local newspaper, in which Reed students were said to resemble "unmade beds" which provided a subject for creating special Reed occasion costumes.
One of the unofficial symbols of Reed is the Doyle Owl, a roughly 280 pounds (127 kg) concrete statue that has been continuously stolen and re-stolen since 1913. The on-campus folklore of events surrounding the Doyle Owl is sufficiently large that, in 1983, a senior thesis was written on the topic of the Owl's oral history
. The original Doyle Owl was almost certainly destroyed many years ago, but a number of replicas (of varying degrees of quality) remain in circulation, contributing to the frequency of its appearance.
Well-known on-campus myths claim there is an intact MG under the concrete foundation of the college library, an underground primate lab working exclusively with snow monkey
s under the Psychology building (the legend states that the presence of this lab was discovered when a snow monkey escaped into the Canyon and necessitated the closing of the facility), and a four-story lab/habitation arcology
under the Physics building. There are many other such stories, often referred to as "Reed legends".
(roughly drawn from the Greek, meaning 'education'). This festival of learning takes the form of ten days (although originally a whole month) of classes and seminars put on by anyone who wishes to teach, including students, professors, staff members, and outside educators invited on-campus by members of the Reed Community. The classes are intended to be informal, yet intellectual activities free of the usual academic pressure endemic to Reed. Many such classes are explicitly trivial (one long-running tradition is to hold an underwater basket weaving
class), while others are trivially academic (such as "Giant Concrete Gnome Construction", a class that, incidental to building monolithic gnome
s, includes some content relating to the construction of pre-Christian monolith
s). More structured classes (such as martial arts seminars and mini-classes on obscure academic topics), tournaments, and film festivals round out the schedule, which is different every year. The objective of Paideia is not only to learn new (possibly non-useful) things, but to turn the tables on students and encourage them to teach.
In his 2005 Stanford commencement lecture, Apple Computer
founder and Reed drop out
Steve Jobs
credited a Reed calligraphy
class for his focus on choosing quality typefaces for the Macintosh. While the full calligraphy course is no longer taught at Reed, Paideia usually features a short course on the subject.
Renn Fayre is an annual three-day celebration at Reed with a different theme each year. Born in the 1960s as an actual renaissance fair
, it has long since lost all connection to anachronism and the Renaissance
, although its name has persisted.
Renn Fayre commences with the Thesis Parade, where graduating seniors make a symbolic march to deliver their theses to the registrar and a fiery pit to burn the year's notes. Students, faculty, and staff gather at the entrance to the library where chaos and champagne get the party started. The parade commences when the senior class moves through the library and out through what was the library's original front entrance (now an emergency exit).
The Fayre runs from Friday to Sunday, beginning on the last day of classes for the spring semester. The week after Renn Fayre is Reading Week, in which no classes are held; final examinations are held in the following week.
Renn Fayre is often called the metaphorical explosion of the student body after a year of intense pressure. Traditions and events include bizarre art installations, bug-eating contests, the alumni Meat Smoke, a naked Slip 'n Slide
, occasional motorized couches, fireworks, naked people painting themselves blue (a tribute to the ancient Picts
), a beer garden
, the Glo Opera (performed at night by actors covered in EL wire and glowsticks), lube wrestling, full-contact human chess, parachuters, castle-storming and bike-jousting by members of C.H.V.N.K. 666
, a fire-dancing performance by the Weapons of Mass Distraction (the college's own Fire Troupe), a softball tournament of academic department teams, a feast contributed to by student-donated leftover board points, a cooking contest, and a general sense of mayhem. Serious injuries are rare, thanks in part to the non-profit White Bird Clinic, and the presence of vigilant student volunteers (the "Karma Patrol") who stay sober, distribute bagels and water, and ensure the wellness of Renn Fayre participants, while "Border Patrol" sees to the exclusion of unauthorized visitors.
Student participation is almost unanimous; faculty and staff also attend some of the festivities. Alumni and authorized guests may also participate.
Student body funds (totaling roughly $370,000 annually) are distributed each semester to groups that place among the top 40 organizations in the semester's funding poll. The funding poll uses a voting system in which each organization provides a description that is ranked by each member of the student body with either 'top six', 'approve', 'no opinion', 'disapprove' or 'deep six.' These ranks are then tabulated by assigning numbers to each rank and summing across all voters. Afterwards, the top forty organizations present their budgets to the student body senate during Funding Circus. The following day the senate makes decisions about each budget in a process called Funding Hell.
The school's student-run newspaper, the Quest, has been published since 1913, and its radio station, KRRC, has been broadcasting, with a few interruptions, since 1955.
Most organizations are highly informal, although some that partner with outside groups such as Oxfam
or Planned Parenthood
are more structured. The Reed archive of comic books and graphic novel
s, the MLLL (Comic Book Reading Room), is well into its fourth decade, and Beer Nation, the student group that organizes and manages various beer garden
s throughout the year and during Renn Fayre, has existed for many years. Some organizations, such as the Motorized Couch Collective – dedicated to installing motors and wheels into furniture – have become more Reed myth than reality in recent years.
Reed has ample recreational facilities on campus, a ski cabin on Mount Hood, recreational clubs such as the Reed Outing Club (ROC), and Club Sports (with college-paid coaches), including ultimate frisbee, co-ed soccer, rugby, basketball, and squash.
Examples of alumni include Emilio Pucci
, Larry Sanger
, Gary Snyder
and Howard Vollum
. Among those who attended but did not graduate from Reed are James Beard
, Chris Langan, Ry Cooder
, and Steve Jobs
.
Liberal arts college
A liberal arts college is one with a primary emphasis on undergraduate study in the liberal arts and sciences.Students in the liberal arts generally major in a particular discipline while receiving exposure to a wide range of academic subjects, including sciences as well as the traditional...
located in southeast Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland
Eastmoreland, Portland, Oregon
Eastmoreland is an early-twentieth century, tree-filled neighborhood in inner southeast Portland, Oregon, United States. The neighborhood is bounded on the north by SE Woodstock Boulevard. The western boundary is a combination of SE 28th Avenue, SE Bybee Boulevard, and SE 27th Avenue...
neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor
Tudor style architecture
The Tudor architectural style is the final development of medieval architecture during the Tudor period and even beyond, for conservative college patrons...
-Gothic
Gothic Revival architecture
The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...
style, and a forested canyon wilderness preserve at its center. Reed is known for its mandatory freshman humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
program, for its required senior-year thesis, as the only private undergraduate college with a primarily student-run nuclear reactor
Nuclear reactor
A nuclear reactor is a device to initiate and control a sustained nuclear chain reaction. Most commonly they are used for generating electricity and for the propulsion of ships. Usually heat from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid , which runs through turbines that power either ship's...
supporting its science programs, and for the unusually high proportion of graduates who go on to earn PhDs and other postgraduate degrees.
History
Simeon Gannett Reed
Simeon Gannett Reed was an American businessman and entrepreneur in Oregon. A native of Massachusetts, he made a fortune primarily in the transportation sector in association with William S. Ladd...
and Amanda Reed. Simeon was an entrepreneur in trade on the Columbia River
Columbia River
The Columbia River is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada, flows northwest and then south into the U.S. state of Washington, then turns west to form most of the border between Washington and the state...
; in his will he suggested that his wife could "devote some portion of my estate to benevolent objects, or to the cultivation, illustration, or development of the fine arts in the city of Portland, or to some other suitable purpose, which shall be of permanent value and contribute to the beauty of the city and to the intelligence, prosperity, and happiness of the inhabitants". The first president of Reed (1910–1919) was William Trufant Foster
William Trufant Foster
William Trufant Foster , was an American educator and economist, whose theories were especially influential in the 1920s. He was the first president of Reed College.- Career :...
, a former professor at Bates College
Bates College
Bates College is a highly selective, private liberal arts college located in Lewiston, Maine, in the United States. and was most recently ranked 21st in the nation in the 2011 US News Best Liberal Arts Colleges rankings. The college was founded in 1855 by abolitionists...
and Bowdoin College
Bowdoin College
Bowdoin College , founded in 1794, is an elite private liberal arts college located in the coastal Maine town of Brunswick, Maine. As of 2011, U.S. News and World Report ranks Bowdoin 6th among liberal arts colleges in the United States. At times, it was ranked as high as 4th in the country. It is...
in Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
.
Contrary to popular belief, the college did not grow out of student revolts and experimentation, but out of a desire to provide a "more flexible, individualized approach to a rigorous liberal arts education". Founded explicitly in reaction to the "prevailing model of East Coast, Ivy League
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eight schools as a group...
education," the college's lack of varsity athletics
Varsity team
In the United States and Canada, varsity sports teams are the principal athletic teams representing a college, university, high school or other secondary school. Such teams compete against the principal athletic teams at other colleges/universities, or in the case of secondary schools, against...
, fraternities
Fraternities and sororities
Fraternities and sororities are fraternal social organizations for undergraduate students. In Latin, the term refers mainly to such organizations at colleges and universities in the United States, although it is also applied to analogous European groups also known as corporations...
, and exclusive social clubs – as well as its coeducational, nonsectarian
Nonsectarian
Nonsectarian, in its most literal sense, refers to a lack of sectarianism. The term is also more narrowly used to describe secular private educational institutions or other organizations either not affiliated with or not restricted to a particular religious denomination though the organization...
, and egalitarian
Egalitarianism
Egalitarianism is a trend of thought that favors equality of some sort among moral agents, whether persons or animals. Emphasis is placed upon the fact that equality contains the idea of equity of quality...
status – gave way to an intensely academic and intellectual college whose purpose was to devote itself to "the life of the mind".
The college holds a reputation for the progressive
Progressivism in the United States
Progressivism in the United States is a broadly based reform movement that reached its height early in the 20th century and is generally considered to be middle class and reformist in nature. It arose as a response to the vast changes brought by modernization, such as the growth of large...
and anti-authoritarian leanings of its community.
Distinguishing features
According to sociologist Burton Clark, Reed is one of the most unusual institutions of higher learning in the United States, featuring a traditional liberal arts and natural sciences curriculum. It requires freshmen to take Humanities 110 – an intensive introduction to the ClassicsClassics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
, covering ancient Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
and Rome as well as the Bible and ancient Jewish history
Jewish history
Jewish history is the history of the Jews, their religion and culture, as it developed and interacted with other peoples, religions and cultures. Since Jewish history is over 4000 years long and includes hundreds of different populations, any treatment can only be provided in broad strokes...
. Its program in the sciences is likewise unusual – Reed's TRIGA research reactor
Reed Research Reactor
The Reed Research Reactor is a research nuclear reactor located on-campus at Reed College in Portland, OR. It is a pool-type TRIGA Mark I reactor, built by General Atomics in 1968 and operated since then under licence from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Maximum thermal output is 500 kW...
makes it the only school in the United States to have a nuclear reactor
Nuclear reactor
A nuclear reactor is a device to initiate and control a sustained nuclear chain reaction. Most commonly they are used for generating electricity and for the propulsion of ships. Usually heat from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid , which runs through turbines that power either ship's...
operated entirely by undergraduates. Reed also requires all students to complete a thesis (a two-semester-long research project conducted under the guidance of professors) during the senior year as a prerequisite of graduation, and passing a junior qualifying exam at the end of the junior year is a prerequisite to beginning the thesis. Upon completion of the senior thesis, students must also pass an oral exam that may encompass questions not only about the thesis, but also about any course previously taken.
Reed maintains a 10:1 student-to-faculty ratio, and its small classes emphasize a "conference" style, in which the teacher often acts as a mediator for discussion rather than a lecturer. While large lecture-style classes exist, Reed emphasizes its smaller lab and conference sections.
Although letter grades are given to students, grades are de-emphasized at Reed. According to the school, "[s]tudents are encouraged to focus on learning, not on grades. Students are evaluated rigorously, and semester grades are filed with the registrar, but by tradition, students do not receive standard grade reports. Papers and exams are generally returned to
students with lengthy comments but without grades affixed. There is no dean’s list
Dean's List
A Dean's List is a category of students in a college or university who achieve high grades during their stay in an academic term or academic year. In secondary schools, or high schools, the term Consistent Honor List or Honor Roll is more common, but Dean's List and Consistent Honor List are...
or honor roll per se, but students who maintain a GPA of 3.5 or above for an entire academic year receive academic commendations, which are noted on their transcripts, at the end of the spring semester. Many Reedies graduate without knowing either their cumulative GPA
Grade (education)
Grades are standardized measurements of varying levels of comprehension within a subject area. Grades can be assigned in letters , as a range , as a number out of a possible total , as descriptors , in percentages, or, as is common in some post-secondary...
or their grades in individual classes. Reed also claims to have experienced very little grade inflation over the years, noting, for example, that only seven students graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA in the period from 1983 to 2007". (Transcripts are accompanied by a card explaining Reed's relatively tough grading system, so as to not penalize students applying to graduate schools.) And though Reed does not award Latin honors
Latin honors
Latin honors are Latin phrases used to indicate the level of academic distinction with which an academic degree was earned. This system is primarily used in the United States, Canada, and in many countries of continental Europe, though some institutions also use the English translation of these...
to graduates, Reed does confer several awards for academic achievement at the time of commencement, including naming students to Phi Beta Kappa.
Reed has no fraternities or sororities, and few NCAA
National Collegiate Athletic Association
The National Collegiate Athletic Association is a semi-voluntary association of 1,281 institutions, conferences, organizations and individuals that organizes the athletic programs of many colleges and universities in the United States...
sports teams, although physical education classes (which range from kayaking
Kayaking
Kayaking is the use of a kayak for moving across water. Kayaking and canoeing are also known as paddling. Kayaking is distinguished from canoeing by the sitting position of the paddler and the number of blades on the paddle...
to juggling
Juggling
Juggling is a skill involving moving objects for entertainment or sport. The most recognizable form of juggling is toss juggling, in which the juggler throws objects up to catch and toss up again. This may be one object or many objects, at the same time with one or many hands. Jugglers often refer...
) are required for graduation. Reed also has several intercollegiate athletic teams, most notably the Rugby, Fencing, and Ultimate Frisbee teams.
Reed's ethical code is known as "The Honor Principle". First introduced as an agreement to promote ethical academic behavior, with the explicit end of relieving the faculty of the burden of policing student behavior, the Honor Principle was extended to cover all aspects of student life. While inspired by traditional honor system
Honor system
An honor system or honesty system is a philosophical way of running a variety of endeavors based on trust, honor, and honesty. Something that operates under the rule of the "honor system" is usually something that does not have strictly enforced rules governing its principles...
s, Reed's Honor Principle differs from these in that it is a guide for ethical standards themselves, not just their enforcement. Under the Honor Principle, there are no codified rules governing behavior. Rather, the onus is on students individually and as a community to define which behaviors are acceptable and which are not.
Discrete cases of grievance, known as "Honor Cases", are adjudicated by a Judicial Board, which consists of nine full-time students. There is also an "Honor Council," which consists of students, faculty, and staff, designed to educate the community regarding the Honor Principle and mediate conflict between individuals.
Academic program
Reed categorizes its academic program into five Divisions and the Humanities program. Overall, Reed offers five HumanitiesHumanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
courses, twenty-six department majors, twelve interdisciplinary majors, six dual-degree programs with other colleges and universities, and programs for pre-medical and pre-veterinary students.
Divisions
- Division of Arts: includes the Art (Art History and Studio Art), Dance, Music, and Theatre Departments;
- Division of History and Social Sciences: includes the History, Anthropology, Economics, Political Science, and Sociology Departments, as well as the International and Comparative Policy Studies Program;
- Division of Literature and Languages: includes the Classics, Chinese, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish Departments, as well as the Creative Writing and General Literature Programs;
- Division of Mathematics and Natural Sciences: includes the Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics Departments, and
- Division of Philosophy, Religion, Psychology, and Linguistics: includes the Philosophy, Religion, Psychology, and Linguistics Departments.
Humanities program
Reed President Richard Scholz in 1922 called the educational program as a whole "an honest effort to disregard old historic rivalries and hostilities between the sciences and the arts, between professional and cultural subjects, and, ... the formal chronological cleavage between the graduate and the undergraduate attitude of mind". The Humanities program, which came into being in 1943 (as the union of two year-long courses, one in "world" literature, the other in "world" history) is one manifestation of this effort. One change to the program was the addition of a course in Chinese Civilization in 1995. The faculty has also recently approved several significant changes to the introductory syllabus. These changes include expanding the parameters of the course to include more material regarding urban and cultural environments.Reed's Humanities program includes the mandatory freshman course Introduction to Western Humanities covering ancient Greek
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
and Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
literature, history, art, religion, and philosophy. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors may take Early Modern Europe covering Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
thought and literature; Modern Humanities covering the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
, the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
, and Modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
, and/or Foundations of Chinese Civilization. There is also a Humanities Senior Symposium.
Interdisciplinary and dual-degree programs
Reed also offers interdisciplinary programs in American studies, Environmental Studies, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Chemistry-Physics, Classics-Religion, Dance/Theatre, History-Literature, International and Comparative Policy Studies (ICPS), Literature-Theatre, Mathematics-Economics, and Mathematics-Physics.Reed offers dual-degree programs
Double degree
A double-degree program, sometimes called a combined degree, conjoint degree, dual degree, or simultaneous degree program, involves a student's working for two different university degrees in parallel, either at the same institution or at different institutions , completing them in less time than...
in Computer Science (with University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
), Engineering (with Caltech, Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Stephen Van Rensselaer established the Rensselaer School on November 5, 1824 with a letter to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Blatchford, in which van Rensselaer asked Blatchford to serve as the first president. Within the letter he set down several orders of business. He appointed Amos Eaton as the school's...
), Forestry or Environmental Management (with Duke University
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
), and Fine Art (with the Pacific Northwest College of Art
Pacific Northwest College of Art
The Pacific Northwest College of Art is a private fine art and design college in Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon. Established in 1910, the art school grants bachelor of fine arts degrees and master of fine arts degrees and has an enrollment of about 550 students...
).
Admissions and student demographics
In 2009, the applicant pool for the class of 2013 was the third largest in Reed's history: 3,159 students applied and 1,225 were admitted, for an admission rate of 38.8%. The admitted class of 2013's average combined Math and Verbal SAT
SAT
The SAT Reasoning Test is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. The SAT is owned, published, and developed by the College Board, a nonprofit organization in the United States. It was formerly developed, published, and scored by the Educational Testing Service which still...
scores were 1407; the mean composite ACT score was 31; and the mean high school GPA was 4.034.
Reed's student body is 45% male and 55% female, and includes 22% minority students: 3% self-report as Black (including African-American, African, and Afro-Caribbean); 6% as Hispanic; 9% as Asian, 2% Native American, and 2% Mixed/Other. Minority numbers include some of the 7% international citizens (13% of freshmen did not self-report their ethnicity). In the class of 2010, 38% of students are from the United States's West Coast (California, Oregon, Washington), with the most coming from California.
Tuition and finances
The total base cost for the 2010–11 academic year, including tuition, fees and room-and-board, is $51,850. In 2009–10 about half of students received financial aid from the college. In 2004 (the most recent data available), 1.4% of Reed graduates defaulted on their student loans – below the national Cohort Default RateCohort Default Rate
A cohort default rate is the percentage of a school's borrowers who enter repayment on certain loans during a federal fiscal year and default prior to the end of the next one to two fiscal years...
average of 5.1%.
Reed's endowment as of June 30, 2010 was $358.7 million. Note, however, that in the economic downturn that began in late 2007, Reed's total endowment declined by about 6% from $455 million in June 2007 to $427 million in June 2008, and to $311 million in June 2009. Although it increased by 15.3% from 2009 to 2010, it remained below its 2007 peak value.
Rankings
In 1995 Reed College refused to participate in the U.S. News and World Report "best colleges" rankings, making it the first educational institution in the United States to refuse to participate in college rankings. According to Reed's Office of Admissions:Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
, in its October 16, 1997 issue, argued that Reed's rankings were artificially decreased by U.S. News after they stopped sending data to U.S. News and World Report. Nicholas Thompson reiterated this judgment in an article in The Washington Monthly in 2000. Reed has also made the same claim. In discussing Reed's decision, President Colin Diver
Colin Diver
Colin Diver is the president of Reed College in Portland, Oregon He was named the college's 14th president on October 5, 2002, replacing acting president Peter Steinberger, dean of Faculty, and succeeding Steven Koblik, who departed Reed College to run the Huntington Library in San Marino,...
wrote in an article for the November 2005 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, "by far the most important consequence of sitting out the rankings game, however, is the freedom to pursue our own educational philosophy, not that of some news magazine".
However, in 2005 Reed did submit statistics to The Princeton Review
The Princeton Review
The Princeton Review is an American-based standardized test preparation and admissions consulting company. The Princeton Review operates in 41 states and 22 countries across the globe. It offers test preparation for standardized aptitude tests such as the SAT and advice regarding college...
, and received first in Overall Undergraduate Academic Experience. In 2009, The Princeton Review ranked Reed number two in "Best Classroom Experience", number three in "Students Study the Most", and number five in "Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians". In 2006, Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
' magazine named Reed as one of twenty-five "New Ivies", listing it among "the nation's elite colleges". The guide to college admissions for About.com
About.com
About.com is an online source for original information and advice. It is written in English, and is aimed primarily at North Americans. It is owned by The New York Times Company....
, moreover, places Reed as one of the top ten liberal arts colleges in the country.
Academic honors
Reed has produced the second-highest number of Rhodes scholarsRhodes Scholarship
The Rhodes Scholarship, named after Cecil Rhodes, is an international postgraduate award for study at the University of Oxford. It was the first large-scale programme of international scholarships, and is widely considered the "world's most prestigious scholarship" by many public sources such as...
for any liberal arts college—31—as well as over fifty Fulbright Scholars
Fulbright Program
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright-Hays Program, is a program of competitive, merit-based grants for international educational exchange for students, scholars, teachers, professionals, scientists and artists, founded by United States Senator J. William Fulbright in 1946. Under the...
, over sixty Watson Fellows, and two MacArthur ("Genius") Award winners. A very high proportion of Reed graduates go on to earn PhDs, particularly in the sciences, history, political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
, and philosophy. Reed is third in percentage of its graduates who go on to earn PhDs in all disciplines, after only Caltech and Harvey Mudd
Harvey Mudd College
Harvey Mudd College is a private residential liberal arts college of science, engineering, and mathematics, located in Claremont, California. It is one of the institutions of the contiguous Claremont Colleges, which share adjoining campus grounds....
. In 1961, Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
declared that second only to Caltech, "This small college in Oregon has been far and away more productive of future scientists than any other institution in the U.S." Reed is first in this percentage in biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
, second in chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
and humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
, third in history, foreign language
Foreign language
A foreign language is a language indigenous to another country. It is also a language not spoken in the native country of the person referred to, i.e. an English speaker living in Japan can say that Japanese is a foreign language to him or her...
s, and political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
, fourth in the physical sciences, math and computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
, and science and engineering, fifth in physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
and social sciences
Social sciences
Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...
, sixth in anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, seventh in area and ethnic studies
Area studies
Area studies are interdisciplinary fields of research and scholarship pertaining to particular geographical, national/federal, or cultural regions. The term exists primarily as a general description for what are, in the practice of scholarship, many heterogeneous fields of research, encompassing...
and linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, and eighth in English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
and the medical sciences.
Reed's debating team, which had existed for only two years at the time, was awarded the first place sweepstakes trophy for Division II schools at the final tournament of the Northwest Forensics Conference in February 2004.
Loren Pope
Loren Pope
Loren Brooks Pope was an American writer and independent college placement counselor.In 1965, Pope, a former newspaperman and education editor of The New York Times, founded the College Placement Bureau, one of the first independent college placement counseling services in the United States...
, former education editor for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, writes about Reed in Colleges That Change Lives
Colleges That Change Lives
Colleges That Change Lives is a college educational guide by Loren Pope. It was originally published in 1996, with a second edition in 2000, and a third edition in 2006...
, saying, "If you're a genuine intellectual, live the life of the mind, and want to learn for the sake of learning, the place most likely to empower you is not Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, or Stanford. It is the most intellectual college in the country—Reed in Portland, Oregon".
Political
Reed has a reputation for being politically left-wing. Whether in fact Reed's student body is more leftist than those of similar colleges is difficult to determine, but Reed's academic tradition of open and passionate debate often spills into the off-campus political arena and, combined with a tolerant social environment, often leads to the appearance of radical leftism.During the McCarthy era
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
of the 1950s, then-President Duncan Ballantine fired Marxist philosopher Stanley Moore, a tenured professor, for his failure to cooperate with the HUAC investigation. According to an article in the college's alumni magazine, "because of the decisive support expressed by Reed's faculty, students, and alumni for the three besieged teachers and for the principle of academic freedom, Reed College's experience with McCarthyism stands apart from that of most other American colleges and universities. Elsewhere in the academic world both tenured and untenured professors with alleged or admitted communist party ties were fired with relatively little fuss or protest. At Reed, however, opposition to the political interrogations of the teachers was so strong that some believed the campus was in danger of closure". A statement of "regret" by the Reed administration and Board of Trustees was published in 1981, formally revising the judgment of the 1954 trustees. In 1993, then-President Steve Koblik invited Moore to visit the College, and in 1995 the last surviving member of the Board that fired Moore expressed his regret and apologized to him.
Drug use
Since the 1960s, Reed has had a reputation for tolerating open drug use among its students. The Insider's Guide to the CollegesThe Insider's Guide to the Colleges
The Insider's Guide to the Colleges is a college educational guide which has been published annually by the student editorial staff of the Yale Daily News for over three decades...
, written by the staff of Yale Daily News
Yale Daily News
The Yale Daily News is an independent student newspaper published by Yale University students in New Haven, Connecticut since January 28, 1878...
, notes an impression among students of institutional permissiveness: "according to students, the school does not bust students for drug or alcohol use unless they cause harm or embarrassment to another student."
Campus
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
tract of land known in 1910 as Crystal Springs Farm, a part of the Ladd Estate, formed in the 1870s from original land claims. The college's grounds include 116 contiguous acres, including a wooded wetland known as Reed Canyon.
Portland architect A. E. Doyle
A. E. Doyle
Albert Ernest Doyle was a prolific architect in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington. He is most often credited for his works as A.E. Doyle....
developed a plan, never implemented in full, modeled on the University of Oxford's St. John's College
St John's College, Oxford
__FORCETOC__St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford, one of the larger Oxford colleges with approximately 390 undergraduates, 200 postgraduates and over 100 academic staff. It was founded by Sir Thomas White, a merchant, in 1555, whose heart is buried in the chapel of...
. The original campus buildings (including the Library, the Old Dorm Block, and what is now the primary administration building, Eliot Hall) are brick Tudor Gothic
Tudor style architecture
The Tudor architectural style is the final development of medieval architecture during the Tudor period and even beyond, for conservative college patrons...
buildings in a style similar to Ivy League
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eight schools as a group...
campuses. In contrast, the science section of campus, including the physics, biology, and psychology (originally chemistry) buildings, were designed in the Modernist
Modern architecture
Modern architecture is generally characterized by simplification of form and creation of ornament from the structure and theme of the building. It is a term applied to an overarching movement, with its exact definition and scope varying widely...
style. The Psychology Building, completed in 1949, was designed by Modernist architect Pietro Belluschi
Pietro Belluschi
Pietro Belluschi was an American architect, a leader of the Modern Movement in architecture, and was responsible for the design of over one thousand buildings....
at the same time as his celebrated Equitable Building in downtown Portland.
The campus and buildings have undergone several phases of growth, and there are now twenty-one academic and administrative buildings and eighteen residence halls. Since 2004, Reed's campus has expanded to include adjacent properties beyond its historic boundaries, such as the Birchwood Apartments complex and former medical administrative offices on either side of SE 28th Avenue, and the Parker House, across SE Woodstock from Prexy. At the same time the Willard House (donated to Reed in 1964), across from the college's main entrance at SE Woodstock and SE Reed College Place, was converted from faculty housing to administrative use. Reed announced on July 13, 2007, that it had purchased the Rivelli farm, a 1.5 acre (0.00607029 km²) tract of land south of the Garden House and west of Botsford Drive. Reed’s "immediate plans for the acquired property include housing a small number of students in the former Rivelli home during the 2007–08 academic year. Longer term, the college anticipates that it may seek to develop the northern portion of the property for additional student housing".
Reed also owns more than a dozen homes adjacent to the campus that are used to house new and visiting faculty.
Residence halls
Psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...
. Until 2006, it was thought that these residence halls had been designed by architect Pietro Belluschi
Pietro Belluschi
Pietro Belluschi was an American architect, a leader of the Modern Movement in architecture, and was responsible for the design of over one thousand buildings....
.
Under the 10-year Campus Master Plan adopted in 2006, Foster-Scholz is scheduled to be demolished and replaced, and MacNaughton to be remodeled. According to the master plan, "The College's goal is to provide housing on or adjacent to the campus that accommodates 75% of the [full-time] student population. At present, the College provides on-campus housing for 838 students".
In Spring 2007, the College broke ground on the construction of a new quadrangle with four new residence halls on the northwest side of the campus, which opened in Fall 2008. A new Spanish House residence has also been completed. Together, the five new residences add 142 new beds.
Reed Canyon
Spring (hydrosphere)
A spring—also known as a rising or resurgence—is a component of the hydrosphere. Specifically, it is any natural situation where water flows to the surface of the earth from underground...
that drains into Johnson Creek.
Canyon Day, a tradition dating back to 1915, is held twice a year. On Canyon Day students and Reed neighbors join canyon crew workers to spend a day helping with restoration efforts.
A landmark of the campus, the Blue Bridge
Blue Bridge (Oregon)
The Blue Bridge is a curved pedestrian and bicycle bridge. The bridge connects the north and south halves of the Reed College campus in Portland, Oregon, United States...
, spans the canyon. It appears on almost every viewbook that the college circulates. This bridge replaced the unique cantilevered bridge that served in that spot between 1959 and 1991, which "featured stressed plywood girders – the first time this construction had been used on a span of this size: a straight bridge 132 feet (40.2 m) long and 15 feet (4.6 m) high. It attracted great architectural interest during its lifetime". The Blue Bridge was originally known as the "Cross Canyon Bridge" until student Rain Lynham bought and installed black lights in 1998 as decoration for Renn Fayre, the traditional end of year, campus-wide party, of which she was the organizer that year. The new look proved so popular with students and faculty alike that the original white bulbs were never replaced.
A new pedestrian and bicycle bridge spanning the canyon was opened in Fall 2008. This bridge, dubbed the "Bouncy Bridge" by students, is 370 feet (112.8 m) long, about a third longer than the Blue Bridge, and "connect[s] the new north campus quad to Gray Campus Center, the student union, the library, and academic buildings on the south side of campus".
Douglas F. Cooley Gallery
Reed's Cooley Gallery is an internationally recognized contemporary art space located at the entrance to Reed's Hauser Library. It was established in 1988 as the result of a gift from Susan and Edward Cooley in honor of their late son. The Cooley Gallery has exhibited international artists such as Mona HatoumMona Hatoum
Mona Hatoum is a video artist and installation artist of Palestinian origin, who lives in London.- Lebanon :...
, Al Held
Al Held
Al Held was an American Abstract expressionist painter. He was particularly well known for his large scale Hard-edge paintings.-Background and education:...
, Marko Lulic and Gregory Crewdson
Gregory Crewdson
Gregory Crewdson is an American photographer who is best known for elaborately staged scenes of American homes and neighborhoods.-Life and career:Crewdson was born in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY...
as well as the contemporary art collection of Michael Ovitz
Michael Ovitz
Michael S. Ovitz is an American talent agent who co-founded Creative Artists Agency in 1975 and served as its chairman until 1995. Ovitz later served as President of the Walt Disney Company from October 1995 to January 1997....
. In pursuit of its mission to support the curriculum of the art, art history, and humanities programs at Reed, the gallery produces three or four exhibitions each year, along with lectures, colloquia, and artist visits. The gallery is currently under the directorship of Stephanie Snyder, who succeeded founding director Susan Fillin-Yeh in 2004.
Food services
The cafeteria, known simply as "Commons", has a reputation for ecologically sustainable food services. The commons dining hall is operated by Bon AppétitBon Appétit Management Company
The Bon Appétit Management Company is a Palo Alto, California-based on-site restaurant company, owned by Compass Group, that provides café and catering services to corporations, colleges and universities. The company operates 400 cafes in 28 states. Princeton Review has named Bon Appétit the "No...
, and food is purchased on an item-by-item basis. Suiting the student body, vegan and vegetarian dishes feature heavily on the menu. It is currently the only cafeteria on the small campus, with the exception of Caffe Paradiso, a small cafe on the other side of campus which also accepts board points.
The Reed College Co-op is a theme residence located in Garden House, after many years on the first floor of MacNaughton Hall. It is the only campus dorm that is independent of the school's board plan. This residence houses ten students who purchase and prepare food together, sharing chores and conducting weekly, consensus-based meetings. It is a close community valuing sustainability, organic food, consensus-based decisions, self-government, music, and plants.
The Paradox ("Est. in the 80s") is a student-run cafe located on campus. In 2003 the Paradox opened a second cafe, dubbing it the "Paradox Lost" (an allusion to John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
's Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...
), at the southern end of the biology building, in the space commonly called the "Bio Fishbowl". The new north-campus dorms, which opened in Fall 2008, feature yet another small cafe, dubbed "Cafe Paradiso", thereby providing three coffee shops within a 116 acre (0.46943576 km²) campus. This third shop is not student-run, but is handled instead by an outside catering service.
Off-campus housing
Reed also has off-campus housing. Many houses in the WoodstockWoodstock, Portland, Oregon
The Woodstock neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, United States, is located in the city's inner southeast section. It is bounded on the north by SE Holgate Boulevard, west by Cesar Chavez Boulevard , east by SE 60th and SE 45th, and south by Johnson Creek...
and Eastmoreland
Eastmoreland, Portland, Oregon
Eastmoreland is an early-twentieth century, tree-filled neighborhood in inner southeast Portland, Oregon, United States. The neighborhood is bounded on the north by SE Woodstock Boulevard. The western boundary is a combination of SE 28th Avenue, SE Bybee Boulevard, and SE 27th Avenue...
Portland neighborhoods are traditionally rented to Reed students. Many students traditionally give their houses creative nicknames as well, which can last through multiple cycles of rentership.
Griffin
The official mascot of Reed is the griffinGriffin
The griffin, griffon, or gryphon is a legendary creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle...
. In mythology, the griffin often pulled the chariot of the sun; in canto 32 of Dante
DANTE
Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
's Commedia the gryphon
Gryphon
-Businesses:* Gryphon Airlines, an American-owned airline based in Vienna, Virginia* Gryphon Audio Designs, a Danish maker of audio components* Golden Gryphon Press, an American independent publishing company...
is associated with the Tree of Knowledge
Tree of Knowledge
-Religion and mythology:* Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, a tree in the Garden of Eden, mentioned in the Book of Genesis-Publications:* The Tree of Knowledge, a novel by Pío Baroja* Drvo Znanja, a Croatian magazine...
. The griffin was featured on the coat-of-arms of founder Simeon Reed and is now on the official seal of Reed College.
School color
The official school color of Reed is Richmond Rose. Over the years, institutional memory of this fact has faded and the color appearing on the school's publications and merchandise has darkened to a shade of maroon. The most common examples of "Richmond Rose" are the satin tapes securing the degree certificate inside a Reed College diploma.School song
The school song, "Fair Reed," is sung to the tune of the 1912 popular song "Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young CharmsBelieve Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms
"Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms" is a popular folk song of early 19th century Ireland and America. Irish poet Thomas Moore wrote the words to a traditional Irish air in 1808. His lyrics are as follows:**...
." It was composed by former president William Trufant Foster
William Trufant Foster
William Trufant Foster , was an American educator and economist, whose theories were especially influential in the 1920s. He was the first president of Reed College.- Career :...
shortly after Reed's founding, and is rarely heard today.
Student nickname
Reed students and alumni referred to themselves as "Reedites" in the early years of the college. This term faded out in favor of the now ubiquitous "Reedie" after World War II. Around campus, prospective students are called "prospies".Unofficial mottos and folklore
An unofficial mottoMotto
A motto is a phrase meant to formally summarize the general motivation or intention of a social group or organization. A motto may be in any language, but Latin is the most used. The local language is usual in the mottoes of governments...
of Reed is "Communism, Atheism, Free Love", and can be found in the Reed College Bookstore on sweaters, t-shirts, etc. It was a label that the Reed community claimed from critics during the 1920s as a "tongue-in-cheek slogan" in reference to Reed's nonconformism
Nonconformism
Nonconformity is the refusal to "conform" to, or follow, the governance and usages of the Church of England by the Protestant Christians of England and Wales.- Origins and use:...
. Reed's founding president William T. Foster's outspoken opposition against the entrance of the United States into World War I, as well as the college's support for feminism, its adherence to academic freedom (i.e., inviting a leader of the Socialist Party of America
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...
to speak on campus about the Russian Revolution’s potential impact on militarism
Militarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
, emancipation of women, and ending the persecution of Jews), and its nonsectarian
Nonsectarian
Nonsectarian, in its most literal sense, refers to a lack of sectarianism. The term is also more narrowly used to describe secular private educational institutions or other organizations either not affiliated with or not restricted to a particular religious denomination though the organization...
status made the college a natural target for what was originally meant to be a pejorative slur.
An alternative motto first appeared on shirts in 1976 as "Capitalism, Avarice, Free Beer", but never overtook the original in popularity. A small group of students has recently been petitioning the bookstore to update the shirts' text to read, "Socialism, Agnosticism, Safe Sex", a comment on the increasingly moderate (though still quite radical) predominating values of the student body. Additionally, the punning "Reed: You Might Learn Something" was a popular slogan in the mid-1980s.
One of the unofficial symbols of Reed is the Doyle Owl, a roughly 280 pounds (127 kg) concrete statue that has been continuously stolen and re-stolen since 1913. The on-campus folklore of events surrounding the Doyle Owl is sufficiently large that, in 1983, a senior thesis was written on the topic of the Owl's oral history
Oral history
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews...
. The original Doyle Owl was almost certainly destroyed many years ago, but a number of replicas (of varying degrees of quality) remain in circulation, contributing to the frequency of its appearance.
Well-known on-campus myths claim there is an intact MG under the concrete foundation of the college library, an underground primate lab working exclusively with snow monkey
Japanese Macaque
The Japanese macaque , historically known as saru , but now known as Nihonzaru to distinguish it from other primates, is a terrestrial Old World monkey species native to Japan....
s under the Psychology building (the legend states that the presence of this lab was discovered when a snow monkey escaped into the Canyon and necessitated the closing of the facility), and a four-story lab/habitation arcology
Arcology
Arcology, a portmanteau of the words "architecture" and "ecology", is a set of architectural design principles aimed toward the design of enormous habitats of extremely high human population density. These largely hypothetical structures would contain a variety of residential, commercial, and...
under the Physics building. There are many other such stories, often referred to as "Reed legends".
Paideia
During the week before the beginning of second-semester classes, the campus holds PaideiaPaideia
In ancient Greek, the word n. paedeia or paideia [ to educate + - -IA suffix1] means child-rearing, education. It was a system of instruction in Classical Athens in which students were given a well-rounded cultural education. Subjects included rhetoric, grammar, mathematics, music, philosophy,...
(roughly drawn from the Greek, meaning 'education'). This festival of learning takes the form of ten days (although originally a whole month) of classes and seminars put on by anyone who wishes to teach, including students, professors, staff members, and outside educators invited on-campus by members of the Reed Community. The classes are intended to be informal, yet intellectual activities free of the usual academic pressure endemic to Reed. Many such classes are explicitly trivial (one long-running tradition is to hold an underwater basket weaving
Underwater basket weaving
Underwater basket weaving is an idiom referring in a negative way to supposedly easy and/or worthless college or university courses, and used generally to refer to a perceived decline in educational standards....
class), while others are trivially academic (such as "Giant Concrete Gnome Construction", a class that, incidental to building monolithic gnome
Gnome
A gnome is a diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature...
s, includes some content relating to the construction of pre-Christian monolith
Monolith
A monolith is a geological feature such as a mountain, consisting of a single massive stone or rock, or a single piece of rock placed as, or within, a monument...
s). More structured classes (such as martial arts seminars and mini-classes on obscure academic topics), tournaments, and film festivals round out the schedule, which is different every year. The objective of Paideia is not only to learn new (possibly non-useful) things, but to turn the tables on students and encourage them to teach.
In his 2005 Stanford commencement lecture, Apple Computer
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
founder and Reed drop out
Dropping out
Dropping out means leaving a group for either practical reasons, necessities or disillusionment with the system from which the individual in question leaves....
Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
credited a Reed calligraphy
Calligraphy
Calligraphy is a type of visual art. It is often called the art of fancy lettering . A contemporary definition of calligraphic practice is "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner"...
class for his focus on choosing quality typefaces for the Macintosh. While the full calligraphy course is no longer taught at Reed, Paideia usually features a short course on the subject.
Renn Fayre
Renaissance Fair
A Renaissance fair, Renaissance faire, or Renaissance festival is an outdoor weekend gathering, usually held in the United States, open to the public and typically commercial in nature, which emulates a historic period for the amusement of its guests. Some are permanent theme parks, others are...
, it has long since lost all connection to anachronism and the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
, although its name has persisted.
Renn Fayre commences with the Thesis Parade, where graduating seniors make a symbolic march to deliver their theses to the registrar and a fiery pit to burn the year's notes. Students, faculty, and staff gather at the entrance to the library where chaos and champagne get the party started. The parade commences when the senior class moves through the library and out through what was the library's original front entrance (now an emergency exit).
The Fayre runs from Friday to Sunday, beginning on the last day of classes for the spring semester. The week after Renn Fayre is Reading Week, in which no classes are held; final examinations are held in the following week.
Renn Fayre is often called the metaphorical explosion of the student body after a year of intense pressure. Traditions and events include bizarre art installations, bug-eating contests, the alumni Meat Smoke, a naked Slip 'n Slide
Slip 'N Slide
The Slip 'n Slide is a toy manufactured by Wham-O, first introduced in 1961 after being invented by Cody Abramson.The toy is a long sheet of thin plastic, flanked lengthwise on one side by a heat-sealed tubular fold. The tube can be attached to any ordinary garden hose. Water runs through the tube...
, occasional motorized couches, fireworks, naked people painting themselves blue (a tribute to the ancient Picts
Picts
The Picts were a group of Late Iron Age and Early Mediaeval people living in what is now eastern and northern Scotland. There is an association with the distribution of brochs, place names beginning 'Pit-', for instance Pitlochry, and Pictish stones. They are recorded from before the Roman conquest...
), a beer garden
Beer garden
Beer garden is an open-air area where beer, other drinks and local food are served. The concept originates from and is most common in Southern Germany...
, the Glo Opera (performed at night by actors covered in EL wire and glowsticks), lube wrestling, full-contact human chess, parachuters, castle-storming and bike-jousting by members of C.H.V.N.K. 666
C.h.u.n.k. 666
CHUNK 666 is a tall bike and chopper bicycle club based in Portland, Oregon and Brooklyn, New York...
, a fire-dancing performance by the Weapons of Mass Distraction (the college's own Fire Troupe), a softball tournament of academic department teams, a feast contributed to by student-donated leftover board points, a cooking contest, and a general sense of mayhem. Serious injuries are rare, thanks in part to the non-profit White Bird Clinic, and the presence of vigilant student volunteers (the "Karma Patrol") who stay sober, distribute bagels and water, and ensure the wellness of Renn Fayre participants, while "Border Patrol" sees to the exclusion of unauthorized visitors.
Student participation is almost unanimous; faculty and staff also attend some of the festivities. Alumni and authorized guests may also participate.
Student organizations
According to Reed's website, each semester, a $130 student body fee "is collected from each full-time student by the business office, acting as agent for the student senate. The fee underwrites publication of the student newspaper and extracurricular activities, and partially supports the student union and ski cabin".Student body funds (totaling roughly $370,000 annually) are distributed each semester to groups that place among the top 40 organizations in the semester's funding poll. The funding poll uses a voting system in which each organization provides a description that is ranked by each member of the student body with either 'top six', 'approve', 'no opinion', 'disapprove' or 'deep six.' These ranks are then tabulated by assigning numbers to each rank and summing across all voters. Afterwards, the top forty organizations present their budgets to the student body senate during Funding Circus. The following day the senate makes decisions about each budget in a process called Funding Hell.
The school's student-run newspaper, the Quest, has been published since 1913, and its radio station, KRRC, has been broadcasting, with a few interruptions, since 1955.
Most organizations are highly informal, although some that partner with outside groups such as Oxfam
Oxfam
Oxfam is an international confederation of 15 organizations working in 98 countries worldwide to find lasting solutions to poverty and related injustice around the world. In all Oxfam’s actions, the ultimate goal is to enable people to exercise their rights and manage their own lives...
or Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood Federation of America , commonly shortened to Planned Parenthood, is the U.S. affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation and one of its larger members. PPFA is a non-profit organization providing reproductive health and maternal and child health services. The...
are more structured. The Reed archive of comic books and graphic novel
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
s, the MLLL (Comic Book Reading Room), is well into its fourth decade, and Beer Nation, the student group that organizes and manages various beer garden
Beer garden
Beer garden is an open-air area where beer, other drinks and local food are served. The concept originates from and is most common in Southern Germany...
s throughout the year and during Renn Fayre, has existed for many years. Some organizations, such as the Motorized Couch Collective – dedicated to installing motors and wheels into furniture – have become more Reed myth than reality in recent years.
Reed has ample recreational facilities on campus, a ski cabin on Mount Hood, recreational clubs such as the Reed Outing Club (ROC), and Club Sports (with college-paid coaches), including ultimate frisbee, co-ed soccer, rugby, basketball, and squash.
Notable alumni
Examples of alumni include Emilio Pucci
Emilio Pucci
Emilio Pucci, Marquis of Barsento , was a Florentine Italian fashion designer and politician. He and his eponymous company are synonymous with geometric prints in a kaleidoscope of colours.-Early life:...
, Larry Sanger
Larry Sanger
Lawrence Mark "Larry" Sanger is an American philosopher, co-founder of Wikipedia, and the founder of Citizendium....
, Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...
and Howard Vollum
Howard Vollum
Charles Howard Vollum , an engineer, scientist, and philanthropist, was the co-founder of Tektronix Corporation, and endowed the Vollum Institute.-Background:Howard Vollum was born on May 31, 1913, in Portland, Oregon...
. Among those who attended but did not graduate from Reed are James Beard
James Beard
James Andrew Beard was an American chef and food writer. The central figure in the story of the establishment of a gourmet American food identity, Beard was an eccentric personality who brought French cooking to the American middle and upper classes in the 1950s...
, Chris Langan, Ry Cooder
Ry Cooder
Ryland Peter "Ry" Cooder is an American guitarist, singer and composer. He is known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and, more recently, his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.His solo work has been eclectic, encompassing...
, and Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
.
External links
- Reed College – official website
- Rennfayre.com, the student-run Renn Fayre website
- Distinctively American: The Residential Liberal Arts Colleges