This timeline is not a comprehensive history of Swarthmore College. Instead, it is merely and intentionally representative, meant to highlight the consistency and longevity of the College's core tenets - academic excellence, the value of coeducation, and social responsibility - as well as the ways in which the people who study and serve here have influenced and continue to shape the institution and the world.
For this project, we relied most heavily on the staff and resources of the Friends Historical Library, Richard Walton's Swarthmore College: An Informal History (1986), and past issues of The Halcyon, The Phoenix, and the Swarthmore College Bulletin. Please send any questions to news@swarthmore.edu.