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Davidson College

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Davidson College

Davidson College is a private liberal arts college in Davidson, North Carolina, United States. It was established in 1837 by the Concord Presbytery and named after Revolutionary War general William Lee Davidson, who was killed at the nearby Battle of Cowan's Ford.

Davidson is a four-year undergraduate institution and enrolls 1,973 students from 50 states and territories, Washington, D.C., and 46 countries. Of those students, 95 percent live on campus, 71 percent study abroad, and about 25 percent participate in 21 NCAA Division I sports. The college's athletic teams, the Wildcats, compete in the Atlantic 10 Conference for all sports except football and wrestling, which compete in the Pioneer Football League and Southern Conference respectively. Davidson's 665-acre (269 ha) main campus is located in a suburban community 19 miles (30 km) north of downtown Charlotte, North Carolina. The college also operates a 110-acre (44.5 ha) lake campus on the shores of nearby Lake Norman.

The college offers 37 majors and 39 minors in liberal arts disciplines as well as other interdisciplinary academic programs. Academic life at Davidson is governed by an honor code that allows students to take self-scheduled, unproctored final exams. Davidson has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is among the top undergraduate institutions whose graduates receive Fulbright Scholarships.

An institution of higher learning of The Presbyterian Church (USA), Davidson College was founded in 1837 by The Concord Presbytery after purchasing 469 acres (1.90 km2) of land from William Lee Davidson II, who claimed possession of at least 25 enslaved individuals in Mecklenburg County and 65 in Alabama. Davidson II owned the Beaver Dam plantation in Davidson, North Carolina where approximately 16-26 enslaved individuals lived and labored. William Lee Davidson II was the son of Revolutionary War commander Brigadier General William Lee Davidson, for whom the college is named. Church records show a meeting on May 13, 1835, among subsequent meetings, by members of the Concord Presbytery making plans to purchase and perform initial construction on the land, with land payments starting Jan 1 of the following year.[citation needed] The first students graduated from Davidson in 1840 and received diplomas with the newly created college seal designed by Peter Stuart Ney, who is believed by some to be Napoleon's Marshal Ney.

In the 1850s, Davidson overcame financial difficulty by instituting "The Scholarship Plan," a program that allowed Davidson hopefuls to purchase a scholarship for $100, which could be redeemed in exchange for full tuition to Davidson until the 1870s. The college's financial situation improved dramatically in 1856 with a $250,000 donation by Maxwell Chambers, making Davidson the wealthiest college south of Princeton.[citation needed] The Chambers Building was erected to commemorate this gift. On November 28, 1921, the Chambers Building was destroyed in a fire but was reconstructed eight years later with funding from the Rockefeller family. The Chambers Building continues to be the primary academic building on campus.

In 1923, the Gamma chapter in North Carolina of Phi Beta Kappa was established at Davidson. Over 1500 men and 500 women have been initiated into Davidson's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. In 1924, James Duke formed the Duke Endowment, which has provided millions of dollars to the college. In 1954, the president of Georgia Tech Blake R. Van Leer and Davidson's president John Rood Cunningham arranged the first-of-its-kind joint engineering program.

On May 5, 1972, the trustees voted to allow women to enroll at Davidson as degree students for the first time. Women had attended classes as early as the 1860s but did not enjoy degree privileges. The first women to attend classes at Davidson were the five daughters of its president, the Rev. John Lycan Kirkpatrick. The first women were permitted to attend classes to increase the size of the student body during the American Civil War. However, art major Marianna "Missy" Woodward became the first woman to graduate from Davidson. She graduated in 1973 and was the only woman in a class of 217.

In early 2005, the college's board of trustees voted in a 31–5 decision to allow 20% of the board to be non-Christian. John Belk, the former mayor of Charlotte and one of the heirs of Belk Department Store, resigned in protest after more than six decades of affiliation with the college. Belk, however, continued his strong relationship with his alma mater and was honored in March 2006 at the Tenth Anniversary Celebration of the Belk Scholarship.

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