About Reed
Mission and History
About Reed College
Since its founding in 1908 as an independent undergraduate institution, Reed College, in Portland, Oregon,
has remained steadfast to one central commitment: to provide a balanced, comprehensive education in liberal
arts and sciences, fulfilling the highest standards of intellectual excellence. The distinctive Reed
experience includes a challenging curriculum involving wide reading, conference and laboratory-based
teaching in small groups, and a student body motivated by enthusiasm for serious intellectual work. Reed
offers a B.A. in one of 22 major fields and numerous interdisciplinary fields, as well as a master of
arts in liberal studies degree.
Reed's Educational Mission
The
curriculum at Reed is highly structured and extremely rigorous. The four basic elements—the required
humanities sequence, the breadth of study requirement, junior qualifying examinations, and the
senior thesis—mix a strong component of interdisciplinary work with study of traditional majors.
First- and second-year students at Reed College develop a strong background in humanistic and
scientific study. The junior and senior years provide opportunity for intensive examination of
the subject matter and techniques of a more narrowly defined academic discipline, culminating in
the senior research project and thesis. At Reed we believe the balance of a general and more specialized
education is best achieved where students and faculty members work closely together in an atmosphere
of shared intellectual and scholarly concern, and where individual interests and
disciplines
are pursued not in isolation, but with a sense of the larger intellectual life of which they are
a part.
Education of this kind, animated by critical inquiry, is in a real sense its own reward, but it also contributes substantially to such objectives as social responsibility and professional success. The effectiveness of such an educational experience as a foundation for widely varying careers is indicated by the outstanding records of Reed graduates in scholarly pursuits, business and industry, the professions, public service, teaching, and fine arts.
History of the College
Reed College was founded in 1908, and its first classes were held in 1911. Reed is
named for Oregon pioneers Simeon and Amanda Reed. Simeon Reed had been 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." Amanda
Reed followed that suggestion in her will by setting up a board of trustees to found
an institution of learning in Portland, with no limits other than an insistence on
equality and secularism. In the ensuing years, Reed College has become one of the
nation's pre-eminent institutions of the liberal arts and sciences.
Read on about the Goal and Operating Principles of Reed College
