Alma College history

Due to declining enrollment, Franklin College ceased operation in 1919.

Featured Course: Reform & Search for Order Urban revolution; middle class reforms; response of industry, labor, and public institutions to the progressive era; World War I; the Jazz Age; the stock market crash of 1929; and the Hoover administration.hst325

The first student dance group, known as the Kiltie Lassies, formed in 1953.

Incorporating “Scotland the Brave” and the sound of bagpipes, band director Sam Jones wrote the Alma College fight song in 1960.

MacKenzie and Guile Graham, Alma’s director of development, presented the idea to the Chamber of Commerce in early 1967.

The first Highland Festival came to the Alma College campus on May 25, 1968.

By 1981 highland dancing was offered as a class through the theater and dance department, taught by Christine Freestone ’74, a former Kiltie Lassie.

In 1992, the Franklin Museum Board of Trustees acquired the building, the last remaining structure from Franklin College, and established a museum.

Alma College’s official tartan was adopted in 1996 and registered with the Scottish Tartan Authority.

In January 1997, President Alan Stone of Alma College asked 480 colleges to boycott the United States News and World Report Rankings due to weaknesses in the peer assessment survey, which counted for 25% of a college's ranking.

After a June 2007 meeting of the Annapolis Group, Alma college joined others who would be boycotting the rankings.