Irving College, located between Simpson and Main Streets in Mechanicsburg from 1856 through 1929, once offered the same type of curriculum, administrative trends, and student organizations that existed at many women's colleges throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Irving was founded in 1856, during the initial rush of female colleges, when no less than seven women's colleges were within a 50 mile radius of the county seat.1 The Methodist-affiliated, and later proprietary, school survived the Civil War and the early part of Reconstruction, but poor administrative management, low student enrolment, and declining funds forced Irving's second president to leave the school, closing it temporarily in January of 1883. However, the school reopened in 1888 and soon prospered under Lutheran auspices and its fourth administrator, Edmond Ernest Campbell (always referred to as E. E.), who purchased, operated, and profited from Irving College.2 Under his direction Irving prospered with extensive building projects, increased student enrolment, and a broader curriculum. Campbell followed growing student interest by constructing athletic fields and organizing student teams as athletics soared on college campuses in the first quarter of the twentieth century. As home economics and secretarial fields opened up to women in the early 1900s, Campbell established and later extended college courses in these areas to meet the growing demand from students.
Irving ultimately suffered from competition with co-educational schools which attracted more students craving closer contact with the opposite sex, a lure single sex colleges were unable to provide. Women's colleges found it difficult to compete with co-educational colleges by the 1920s, and many of them closed their doors. Between the competition from co-educational colleges, and the death of Campbell in 1926, Irving was unable to obtain students, and the college closed in 1931. Although efforts were made by the alumnae to reopen the college, lack of financial support and the arrival of the Great Depression prevented this occurrence. Though Irving accepted students for only about 70 years, there was quite a whirlwind of change affecting the school from its change in religious affiliation, the arrival of Dr. Campbell, and the social changes in America at the turn of the century. One aspect of Irving College that represents these changes is the appearance, influence, and gradual disappearance of what is known as the seminary system. The seminary system was a set of strict rules and codes of behavior put in place by women's seminaries of the early 1800s, but largely influenced by Mary Lyon, the founder of Mount Holyoke Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
Women's seminaries were early institutions of women's higher education. Growing out of secondary academies of the early 1800s, they became the earliest step for women into the professional ranks of teaching, just as male seminaries led men toward the ministry.3 However, female seminaries never taught Latin, Greek, and the classical/liberal arts curriculum honored by male colleges, but rather focused on the study of history, philosophy, and modern sciences, to prepare for secondary school teaching. 4
Despite the seminaries' weak curriculum, many early colleges for women looked to these schools as models for how to house, teach, and discipline students, with full schedules and strict regulations. By the turn of the century, however, administrators of women's colleges began slowly to move away from seminary ideas (often through student pressure), so that by the 1920s less and less evidence of the seminary influence remained. Irving's first two presidents, both Methodist ministers, Rev. Archibald G . Marlatt and Rev. Thompson P. Ege, instituted aspects of the seminary system at Irving, which still existed in many ways by E. E. Campbell's time.
The advancement of civilization demands a full development of the minds of our girls. The day when the boy is to be educated and the girl neglected has, like other relics of barbarism, passed into history.