Goucher College has announced it will receive an approximately $55 million gift — the largest donation in the institution’s 140-year history. The gift, a bequest from Goucher alumna Anica Donnan Rawnsley ’51 will sustain scholarships in future years and ensure continued opportunities and support for Goucher students. This new bequest will help to strengthen Goucher’s endowment, which currently stands at approximately $235 million and is ranked in the top 16% of all private colleges and universities in the country.

Kimberly Meisel, director of academic advising and support, and Isabel Moreno-Lopez, associate provost for undergraduate studies, were featured in Inside Higher Ed about Goucher College’s ‘Learning to Learn’ class. The piece highlights Goucher’s efforts to help students struggling academically to engage in effective learning strategies and increase their cumulative GPAs.

The Goucher College Poll is the preeminent poll measuring the opinions of Maryland residents and voters on important policy, social, and economic issues. Goucher students help research survey questions, design the questionnaire, and analyze the results. Earlier this month, Maryland registered voters were asked their opinions on several issues about the upcoming race for the U.S. Senate, on Gov. Wes Moore, and on the direction of and economic conditions in Maryland.

Goucher College has announced a new undergraduate major in public health that will explore the multidisciplinary field and the science of protecting and improving the health of people and their communities. Distinctive features of Goucher’s new program are the emphasis on global health and the strong focus on social justice and environmental sustainability. Goucher students will also have unique access to a 4+1 undergraduate and graduate degree program with Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, where they can earn their undergraduate degree at Goucher while pursuing a Master’s of Health Sciences in Social Factors in Health or a Master’s of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins.

Goucher College has been named a host site for the inaugural class of Service Year Option and Maryland Corps members in a partnership with the Maryland Department of Service and Civic Innovation. The department aims to expand service and volunteerism statewide, creating new pathways of service to meet community needs, enhance workforce development, and promote preparedness for both collegiate and vocational education.

Two Goucher College Hughes Center for Politics research assistants—Myles Maxwell and Rianne Nickerson—recently co-authored an op-ed with Associate Professor Mileah Kromer in The Baltimore Banner. Working with Professor Kromer, the students completed the background research and coded the open-ended survey responses, as they worked on the bylined piece focused on public perceptions versus the reality of violent crime.

Award-winning journalist and Goucher alumna Erica Green ’07 was recently named a White House correspondent for The New York Times. Green has worked at The Times for nearly seven years, previously serving as an education reporter, where her work earned her first place in the Education Writers Association’s Beat Reporting category. Prior to joining The Times, Erica worked as an education reporter at The Baltimore Sun, where she was part of the team named a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist for breaking news coverage of the death of Freddie Gray.

Alumnae/i spanning decades, retired professors, parents, trustees, and other members of the Goucher community have come together to endorse the new Science Innovation Center. Since the announcement of the project’s $10 million lead gift and donor challenge, a cross-section of supporters has committed more than $3 million to build the annex to the Hoffberger Science Building.

Goucher is proud to announce the launch of five new accelerated three-year degree tracks for five of its current majors. Business management, computer science, data science, economics, and psychology degree tracks offer students a rigorous liberal arts education on an accelerated timeline. In addition to the financial savings, this is a unique opportunity to join one of the few programs like this in the world where, when paired with selected academic partnership programs, students could graduate with both an undergraduate and graduate degree in four years.

Goucher College is pleased to announce the students selected to be Arsht Presidential Diplomats for the 2023-24 academic year, the third such cohort at the college. The Arsht Diplomats play a prominent role at Goucher, representing the college at meetings with government officials and business leaders, as well as at community-facing events, while also developing leadership skills.