The Scholar: Katie Borden

The Project: The First Generation of Women in the Ivy Leagues

The Essential Question: “From the beginning of a young girl’s education in society today, she is taught that for decades, people believed men were superior to women. It took years for society to accept that women had the potential to be intelligent, and yet, ‘women of genius were ‘rare exceptions in the world’ and those who existed displayed a suspicious ‘something virile about them.’’ When women were finally admitted to college, many said it made them less desirable. If they were educated, most men agreed they ‘must not have too dominating a personality.’ My project reveals that gender discrimination still exists today in higher education.”

What I Learned: “These brave first classes of women changed gender roles today in countless ways. They not only brought light to the issues that Americans have worked for decades to fix, but they turned the world’s attention to issues that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. My favorite part of the project was the connections I made interviewing my aunt and my uncles, finding out how they were all treated in college.”