Claremont Colleges

The five undergraduate colleges are:

• Pomona College (founded 1887) is the oldest and largest of the colleges. It is coeducational, and offers majors in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.
• Scripps College (founded 1926) is the women's college of the Claremont Colleges. It offers an interdisciplinary curriculum with an emphasis in the humanities.
• Claremont McKenna College (founded 1946), was founded as Claremont Men's College and became coeducational in 1976. It specializes in political science, economics, finance, and international relations.
• Harvey Mudd College (founded 1955) specializes in engineering, mathematics, computer science, and the physical and biological sciences, but also includes coursework in the humanities and social sciences.
• Pitzer College (founded 1963) is known for its experimental pedagogical approach and focus on social justice. Its curriculum emphasizes the social sciences.

The two graduate universities are:

• Claremont Graduate University (founded 1925) awards master's and doctoral degrees in 31 disciplines across seven schools.
• Keck Graduate Institute (founded 1997) is a biomedical graduate school, with schools of applied life science, pharmacy and health sciences, and medicine. It also co-sponsors a remote four-year undergraduate program, Minerva Schools at KGI.

The Claremont School of Theology (founded 1885) (and thus Claremont Lincoln University) is affiliated with the consortium, but is not a member.

An exterior view of Pomona College in 1907, featuring its two earliest buildings: Sumner Hall (right)[12] and Holmes Hall (left)[13]

Before the idea of the Claremont Colleges, Pomona College was founded in 1887.[14] Pomona began after a group of congregationalists envisioned a “New England-type” college on the West Coast.[14][15] Pomona College relocated to Claremont, California after the college acquired an unfinished hotel in Claremont.[14] And 23 years later, James A. Blaisdell became president of Pomona. Though in 1923, Pomona College faced a problem.[14] The school's population was growing. Thus, Pomona either had to go against their ideals of expanding or limit the amount of growth at the college. James Blaisdell developed a different option. He advised the college chose to form a consortium of differentiated small colleges, modeled after Oxford and Cambridge. In October 1923, President James A. Blaisdell of Pomona College wrote to Ellen Browning Scripps describing a vision of educational excellence he had for the future Claremont Colleges:

I cannot but believe that we shall need here in the South [of California] a suburban educational institution of the range of Stanford. My own very deep hope is that instead of one great undifferentiated university, we might have a group of institutions divided into small colleges — somewhat on the Oxford type — around a library and other utilities which they would use in common. In this way I should hope to preserve the inestimable personal values of the small college while securing the facilities of the great university. Such a development would be a new and wonderful contribution to American education. Now the thing which would assure this future institution to Southern California is land ... It is now or never. To save the needed land for educational use seems to me to guarantee to Southern California one of the great educational institutions of America. Other hands through the centuries will carry on the project and perfect it. But never again can there come so fundamental a service as this.[16][17]

The start of the Claremont Colleges came in 1925 with the addition of a graduate school, now known as Claremont Graduate University.[18] The college was originally known as Claremont College and began to function in 1927.[18] The second addition came in 1926 when Ellen Browning Scripps founded Scripps College.[19] Scripps College allowed Ellen Browning Scripps to put-forth her plan of a school which offered women access to a higher education, to better their professional careers and to better their personal lives.[20] Scripps College officially opened in 1927.[19] In 1946, 86 students and 7 faculty members formed the fourth institution of the Claremont Colleges, known as Claremont McKenna College.[21] CMC was formed as a fully male undergraduate school until women were admitted in 1976.[21] In 1955, Harvey Mudd College became the fifth institute in the consortium.[22] HMC was founded by Harvey Seeley Mudd, a former chairman of the Board of Fellows of Claremont College.[22] He envisioned an undergraduate college in the consortium that focused its education in science and engineering. In 1963, Pitzer College joined the Claremont Colleges.[23] Pitzer was founded as a college for woman focusing on the social sciences.[23] Later in 1970, Pitzer enrolled 80 men.[23] The school was named after Russell K. Pitzer, an important benefactor in the development of the institution.[23] The final and seventh college to join the consortium was Keck Graduate Institute.[24] KGI was founded in 1997 after a $50 million donation from W.M. Keck Foundation.[24] The graduate school focuses on post-graduate biomedical applications.[24] Initially planned to be located on Bernard Field Station lands, protests forced the institute to relocate to a site southwest of the Claremont Village.[25] Alongside the institutions, Claremont College Services was founded on July 1, 2000.[26] The Claremont College Services provides educational support to all the institutions in the consortium.[26] Specifically, TCCS aids in projects of group planning, establishment of new institutions into the consortium and hold expansion lands.[26]

According to the American Liberal Arts College rankings released by U.S. News & World Report in fall 2018, the "5Cs" were ranked among the top 50 liberal art colleges in the United States: Pomona College (#5), Claremont McKenna College (#9), Harvey Mudd College (#18), Scripps College (#30), and Pitzer College (#41). Additionally, all of the undergraduate colleges are categorized as "Most Selective".[27] Forbes ranked the 5C's among the top 60 undergraduate colleges (including universities and military academies) in the nation and within the top 25 liberal arts colleges for its 2017 report: Pomona College (#10 overall, #1 LAC), Claremont McKenna College (#11 overall, #2 LAC), Harvey Mudd College (#18 overall, #5 LAC), Scripps College (#43 overall, #16 LAC), and Pitzer College (#59 overall, #23 LAC).[28] Niche listed all of the undergraduate colleges within the top 30 small colleges in the United States as measured by surveys rating various components of the undergraduate experience: Pomona College (#2), Harvey Mudd College (#5), Claremont McKenna College (#10), Scripps College (#22), and Pitzer College (#29).[29] U.S. News & World Report also releases individual graduate program rankings for the Claremont Graduate University, with several of its programs ranking in the top tier of graduate programs nationwide.[30]

Honnold Library

Each college is independent in that, for example, students receive their degrees from the one college in which they are enrolled, and administration and admissions departments are independent. The seven-institution Claremont Colleges system is supported by The Claremont Colleges Services (TCCS), which provides centralized services, such as a library, student health, financial and human resources, telecommunications, risk management, real estate, physical plant maintenance, and other services, for those colleges.

Shared facilities include the Libraries of the Claremont Colleges, Campus Safety, the Tranquada Student Services Center (which houses Baxter Medical Center, Monsour Counseling Center, and the Health Education Outreach), McAlister Center (home of the Office of the Chaplains and the Claremont Card Center), EmPOWER Center (which works to address sexual violence), the Rick and Susan Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity (The Hive), the Huntley Bookstore, all dining facilities, and several sports facilities. The Claremont Colleges Library is an example of the level of cooperation in terms of support services. The size of the library collection ranks third among the private institutions in California, behind only Stanford and USC.[31]

Shared academic departments include the Intercollegiate Women's Studies Center, the Intercollegiate Department of Chicano Studies, the Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies, the Intercollegiate Department of Africana Studies (formerly Black Studies), the Intercollegiate Department of Religious Studies, the Intercollegiate Department of Media Studies, and the Five-College Theater Department.

Shared intercollegiate programs include the European Union Center of California, the Chicano/Latino Student Affairs Center, the Office of Black Student Affairs, the Office of the Chaplains, Hillel, and the Queer Resource Center.

In addition, three of the Claremont Colleges—Claremont McKenna College, Pitzer College, and Scripps College—share a single science program. These three colleges pool their resources to create the largest academic department in Claremont, the Joint Science Department. Many research projects and courses utilize the Robert J. Bernard Field Station, an 86-acre (35 ha) natural area which consists principally of the rare Coastal Sage Scrub ecosystem.

A Pomona-Pitzer football game

Pomona College and Pitzer College compete together as the Pomona-Pitzer (PP) Sagehens.[40] Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College and Scripps College also compete together as the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) Stags (for male teams) and Athenas (for female teams).[41] The teams participate in NCAA Division III in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC). In the Division III Final Standings for the 2016-2017 year, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps ranked fourth nationally, while Pomona-Pitzer ranked 29th; they were the top two performers in the SCIAC.[42] Culturally, the Claremont Colleges place less emphasis on sports than many other institutions.[43]

• Bernard, Robert J. (1982). An unfinished dream: A chronicle of the group plan of The Claremont Colleges. Claremont, Calif.: Claremont University Center.

• Official website
• Website of The Student Life, the 5C newspaper
• Claremont Colleges Photo Archive in the Claremont Colleges Digital Library