The Philomatheia Club, 1917—women in support of Boston College. Photograph: Burns Archive

The Council for Women of Boston College celebrated the recent shift of the University’s alumni base to a female majority by commissioning the film Making Our Place: A History of Women of Boston College. Below, a timeline of BC’s “first women,” drawn from the film, which premiered this past spring.

1910 Unidentified nuns from teaching orders in Boston are the first women to study under Boston College faculty.

1925 Mary C. Mellyn, assistant superintendent of the Boston public schools and sister of James F. Mellyn, SJ (dean of BC’s fledgling Graduate School of Education), is the first woman to receive a Boston College degree, an honorary doctorate.

1926 Margaret U. Magrath and Olivia C. Penell are awarded master of arts degrees—the first women to earn degrees from BC.

1928 First women hired to faculty: Alice Driscoll, geography; Olivia C. Penell, educational methods; Mary Quigley, mathematics; and Rose E. Weiffenbach, English.

1930 Olivia C. Penell and Marion E. Fitzgerald are the first women to earn doctorates.

1944 School of Social Work Dean Dorothy Book is the first female dean.

1956 Women in the School of Education are the first undergraduates to study alongside men on campus. Also that year, Mary Kinnane is named the first “Dean for Women” at Boston College.

1959 Alice Bourneuf becomes the University’s first female tenured full professor, in the economics department. Also, undergraduates Ann Bell, Mary Driscoll, Diane Glennon, Margaret McLaughlin, Elizabeth O’Connell, Caroline O’Hara, and Mary Jane Skatoff are the first women to be admitted to the College of Arts & Sciences. Their admission is subsequently challenged by senior administrators in the Society of Jesus, and no further women are admitted to A&S until 1970.

1965 Ann O’Malley ’66 (Education) is the first woman to be named editor-in-chief of the Heights.

1966 Sylvia Simmons, registrar of the business school, is the first African-American woman hired to the BC administration.

1971 Patricia Goler, MA’51, Ph.D.’57, a dean at UMass-Lowell, and Mary Lai, the treasurer of Long Island University, are the first women appointed to the Board of Trustees. Also, women’s basketball becomes the first female sport to achieve varsity status.

1972 Clare Schoenfeld is the first woman to graduate from the School of Management.

1974 Maureen Dezell ’75 is the first woman elected editor-in-chief of the Stylus.

1975 Margaret A. Dwyer, M.Ed.’56, is appointed the first female vice president.

1981 Joanne Caruso ’82 is the first woman elected president of the undergraduate student government.

1983 Mary K. Casey is the first female graduate of ROTC.

1985 Sheila McGovern ’57, JD’60, is the first female president of the Alumni Association.

1992 Mary Lou DeLong, NC’71, vice president for university relations, is the first female vice president of a division.

1996 Monan Professor Lisa Sowle Cahill, of theology, is the first woman to hold an endowed chair at Boston College.