{"id":5225,"date":"2019-02-07T12:13:06","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T17:13:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter\/?page_id=5225"},"modified":"2019-02-07T12:13:06","modified_gmt":"2019-02-07T17:13:06","slug":"first-female-to-graduate","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-winter2019\/features\/women-at-the-summit\/first-female-to-graduate\/","title":{"rendered":"First Female to Graduate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Though Alyson Adler \u201973 was the first woman in the first coed cohort to graduate from the college, a handful of women transfer students earned their degrees ahead of her. The first woman to receive a Trinity undergraduate diploma was Judy Dworin \u201970, who came to Trinity in the fall of 1969 as a transfer student from Smith College. An American studies major with a focused interest in dance, she was drawn to the college by the chance to study with Clive Thompson of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, who, with wife Liz Thompson, introduced dance to Trinity that year. Dworin ended up staying for the spring semester because she was drawn to the school\u2019s open curriculum.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was able to do several independent studies, starting a dance program in an inner-city school as well as an alternative high school for troubled youth on Trinity\u2019s campus. I really wanted to stay at Trinity,\u201d she recalls. \u201cIt was also a year of campus strikes and political and social activism on campuses. I was very engaged in all of it. It really gave me the opportunity to do things I couldn\u2019t have done at Smith, even though I had gotten an enormous amount out of my education there in the first years.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other hand, \u201cTrinity wasn\u2019t really prepared for women\u2019s arrival,\u201d she notes. \u201cIt was a male institution, and it had a very male feeling to it. That took time to go away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dworin played a decisive role in Trinity\u2019s evolution into a more balanced coed environment as both student and faculty member. A year after graduating, she returned to join the faculty\u2014which was then predominantly male\u2014to teach dance. \u201cI actually felt it was more difficult for me as a woman to be a faculty member than a student,\u201d she recalls. \u201cEd Nye, an engineering professor who had just been appointed dean of the faculty, offered me a part-time position when Clive Thompson left to pursue his performing career, to prove that a dance program could work at Trinity. Dance had very little respect as an academic discipline among many of the faculty and administration. I started out feeling very much like an outlier with a very challenging job ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over time, Dworin built the dance program and helped to create the Department of Theater and Dance, which she chaired for many years. \u201cIt was important to establish an equality for dance with theater right from the start, in the same way that it was essential to do so for women and men,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs hard as it was to build the dance program, I feel very committed to it and to the college,\u201d says Dworin, who retired recently after nearly 45 years on the faculty. \u201cOver time, I think Trinity has become a more arts-engaged place and has become a more solidified community as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

She continues to lead the Judy Dworin Performance Project (JDPP), an arts nonprofit in Hartford she founded in 1989 that reaches out on stage and in the community\u2019s schools and prisons to educate and inspire. JDPP remains a community partner of the college. And Dworin remains appreciative of the opportunities she had at Trinity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were very few places that would have given someone right out of college the opportunity to see if they could create a program,\u201d she says. \u201cThe program for me became a model of what learning should and could be about, combining experience and creative expression with more traditional academic study in an environment that welcomed both women and men.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next: First Female Tripod Editor, Susannah Heschel \u201973, H\u201910<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though Alyson Adler \u201973 was the first woman in the first coed cohort to graduate from the college, a handful of women transfer students earned their degrees ahead of her. The first woman to receive a Trinity undergraduate diploma was Judy Dworin \u201970, who came to Trinity in the fall of 1969 as a transfer … <\/p>\n

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