Fonds UR-020 - Mount Saint Vincent College fonds

As Mount Saint Vincent Academy expanded and many of its graduates returned to take college courses or complete degrees elsewhere, the Sisters of Charity identified a need for a college aimed at providing education to women in the Maritimes.

By 1921, four of the Sisters of Charity held doctorate degrees, and an additional five more would receive them in the following decade. This, in addition to a growing population of students, made Mount Saint Vincent well-positioned to propose a bill for a college charter, which it did in 1925. The bill passed without opposition, and Mount Saint Vincent College became Nova Scotia’s seventh degree-granting institution and the first and only independent degree-granting college for women in Canada and the British Commonwealth.

In October of 1927, the College opened with 47 students. The first commencement occurred on June 1 of that year, when Rose Orlando earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and Dorothy MacDougall received a Bachelor of Secretarial Science degree from the College. With the motherhouse's expansion, college students were housed separately from academy students, and enrolment continually expanded throughout the decade. In addition to operating as a liberal arts college, Mount Saint Vincent College offered professional degrees, including Secretarial Science (1927), Home Economics (early 1930s), Nursing (1935), Social Work (1940), and Journalism (1945).

The College continued to expand in the postwar period, and in 1966 one of Sister Alice Michael’s (Catherine Wallace’s) first acts as President was to obtain a new college charter. It was successfully passed in Nova Scotia’s Legislative Assembly, this resulted in Mount Saint Vincent College becoming Mount Saint Vincent University.