Mission & History

Mount Holyoke has a long and proud history of international engagement.

• The first international student enrolled in 1839 (two years after the college’s founding), marking the beginning of growing international student diversity at the college, with over 600 students from more than 50 countries today.
• The first domestic student studied abroad in 1928 (in Paris), experiencing the profound personal and professional impact of immersion in a culture different from one’s own.
• Mount Holyoke President Mary Woolley (1901-1937) was the only female participant in the U.S. government delegation to the international disarmament conference in Geneva in 1932; a shining example of our commitment to make the world a better place.
• Politics professor Ruth Lawson established the first Mount Holyoke international internship program in 1949, enabling students to see their studies, career paths, and themselves in new and expanded ways.

Over the decades Mount Holyoke developed a rich array of internationally-focused curricular and co-curricular offerings. Then in 2003, our faculty and trustees decided that the realities of an increasingly globalizing world demanded that we make comprehensive internationalization a strategic priority. The college established the McCulloch Center for Global Initiatives to implement internationalization within the entire community of faculty, students, staff, and alumnae and to extend MHC’s international involvement to a network of organizations around the globe that focus on social justice, health, business, environment, culture, science and technology, and share MHC’s values and principles.

In collaboration with our faculty and staff colleagues, support from the College leadership and alumnae, and in partnership with foundations and organizations around the world, we have been weaving global education into the fabric of a Mount Holyoke education.

• In March 2014, the American Council on Education (ACE) and the SUNY Center for Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) named MHC as one of three recipients of their new Leaders in Internationalization through Technology Awards.
• In October 2014, the community celebrated the 10th anniversary of the McCulloch Center with guests from around the world, and keynote addresses from Nobel Peace Prize Winner Leymah Gbowee and Carol Geary Schneider, ’67, President of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U).

• In November 2015, NAFSA, the premier U.S. professional organization for international education recognized Mount Holyoke’s excellence with the Senator Paul Simon Award for Comprehensive International Education.

We continue to be strongly committed to enable Mount Holyoke students, through successful careers and as global citizens to contribute meaningfully to a more just and sustainable world.