Wilson College history

19, 1870, edition of the Franklin Repository stated that the "effort will not be to cram the minds of pupils with facts, but to spend the time in development of thought so that the pupils will learn to think for themselves, and thus become leaders, instead of followers, in society."

Miss Sarah Wilson (1795-1871), a resident of nearby St Thomas, provided two generous donations for the establishment of the new institution.

Warren Wilson was born near Tidioute, Pennsylvania, and spent his teen years in nearby Bradford, where his father moved the family in 1879.

He graduated in 1890 from Oberlin College and moved to New York City where he became the first secretary of the YMCA and edited its magazine, The Intercollegian.

They purchased property in the Swannanoa Valley near Asheville in 1893.

In 1894, the Asheville Farm School officially opened with 25 boys attending and a professional staff of three people.

In 1901 he became superintendent of the Department of Church and Country Life.

Warren Wilson received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1908 and that same year joined the staff of the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church (United StatesA.) as one of two superintendents in the Department of Church & Labor.

President Anna J. McKeag, Wilson’s first woman president (1911-15), strengthened the College’s academic standards.

First named Wilson Female College, it took its present name in 1920.

The Warren Wilson Vocational Junior College was joined with them under our one administration. It was not until 1923 that the school had its first graduating class.

In 1936, the first post high school programs in vocational training were begun.

In 1942, the junior college division was established.

A measure of the College’s intellectual strength is the establishment in 1950 of a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor society.

In 1967 the Wilson College sailing team won the first Intercollegiate Sailing Association national championship held in a women's event (dinghy).

Although it nearly closed its doors in 1979, a lawsuit organized by students, faculty, parents and an alumnae association succeeded in allowing the college to remain open, making it one of the few colleges to survive a scheduled closing.

In 1982, the College became one of the first in the region to offer a continuing studies program to meet the needs of a growing population of adults seeking a post-secondary education.