This article is featured in the 2026 Commencement special issue.
By the time the first coeducational class at Dartmouth graduated in 1976, only a handful of women had ever served on the College’s faculty. Behind the 50-year mark of coeducation lies older stories of female professors who were trailblazers, entering male-dominated spaces so that future educators and students could thrive too.
On Sept. 27, 1918 — 58 years before the first coeducational class of women graduated at Dartmouth — Elizabeth Hapgood became the College’s first female professor. She was appointed by the then-Board of Trustees as an instructor in the newly-created Russian department, according to Rauner Special Collections Library archivist Jay Satterfield.
Satterfield said in an interview with The Dartmouth that Hapgood’s appointment was more out of “desperation” for the Russian department than a conscious effort by the College to include women on the faculty.
“She is the first woman faculty member because they [the then-trustees] couldn’t find a man to teach Russian,” he explained. “It was during the war [World War I], and all of the men who knew Russian were either in the diplomatic corps or in the war.”
Satterfield added that Rauner archives contain multiple letters between former College President Ernest Martin Hopkins and then-Romance Languages department head Louis Dow that “go on and on about not hiring a woman.” The Dartmouth was not able to review the letters by the time of publication.
“They just didn’t want to hire a woman ... but out of desperation they did it,” Satterfield said.
Hapgood worked at Dartmouth for about a term-and-a-half before she moved away with her husband for his business, according to Satterfield. Although her time at Dartmouth was short-lived, Hapgood broke the glass ceiling for women in the College by becoming the first female professor.
Eighteen years later, biologist Hannah Croasdale began working at the College. According to an eponymous award given by the Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies, Croasdale became the first woman to become a full professor in the arts and sciences at Dartmouth and to obtain tenure.
In an interview with The Dartmouth, Caroline Cook ’21, who wrote a fictional book inspired by Croasdale’s life titled “Tell Them to Be Quiet and Wait” in 2022, said she found through her research that Croasdale came to the College because she “wanted to be the best biologist that she could be.” Even when she faced gender discrimination, her determination “steeled her for some of the treatment.” For example, “every year she had to fill out a new piece of paperwork that updates your address, those sorts of things, to your employer, and there was a line for wife that she would just cross out,” Cook said.
In addition to Croasdale being the first tenured woman, “several women have the right to [the] title” of first female professor in their respective fields because “there were so many women who were ‘firsts’ in different capacities,” Cook added.
“I think that if you look in different pockets around the school, you’ll find women who were occasionally teaching courses,” Cook said. “There’s also a number of women who were involved in the medical school, so the title of first woman professor is actually pretty complicated to assign.”
Marysa Navarro-Aranguren, who arrived at Dartmouth in 1968, established and chaired the women’s studies program, which is now the women’s gender and sexuality studies program, and the Latin American, Latino and Caribbean studies programs. While at the College, Navarro-Aranguren advocated for coeducation and the hiring of more female faculty members.
In an interview with The Dartmouth, Navarro-Aranguren’s daughter Nina Gerassi-Navarro, said her mother “argued a lot, and often felt frustrated [with the male-structured systems], but loved Dartmouth.”
“It gave her a real sense of belonging, because she was going to change that place for what she thought was better,” Gerassi-Navarro added.
Gerassi-Navarro said that her mother was a strong advocate for coeducation. Navarro-Aranguren even made a bet with then-College President John Kemeny that if coeducation were to come into fruition, she would “run around the Green with a football helmet.” When coeducation was eventually approved by the Board of Trustees, she stuck to her word and fulfilled her promise.
Gerassi-Navarro added that she believed the best way to honor her mother and other women is to “to empower all students” regardless of gender.
“Let them find their fields and not contain them within a certain specific field,” she said. “If women want to be engineers, be engineers, or if they want to be teachers, be teachers, and not to assign any different characteristics to a specific field, but that it be genderless.”
Women of Dartmouth alumni group global chair Bernardine Wu ’90 said many early female faculty are well-known by Dartmouth alumni and community members.
“Not too long ago I was in a room and someone mentioned [Navarro-Aranguren], and the entire room erupted in applause and a standing ovation,” she said.
Other pioneering female professors at Dartmouth were English professor Lynda Boose, who began working at Dartmouth in 1985, and Native American studies professor Elaine Jahner, who came to the College in 1984 and taught some of the first Native American courses offered.
Wu said Jahner, who was her English professor her freshman year, “recognized something in me that gave me confidence” to pursue an English degree.
“I think a lot of keeping honoring and celebrating people is about keeping on telling their stories,” Wu said.
Madeline Kahn Ehrlich '29 is a reporter from upstate New York. She is considering studying English and Public Policy. She enjoys creative writing, art and reading historical fiction.
