(When I found myself on the Thiel College campus this summer, I thought it a bit odd to be on a road called Amelia Earhart Drive. Would I end up in the middle of nowhere, never to be seen again if I followed it to the end? Turns out there is a real connection to the famous aviatrix!)
Thiel College in Greenville, Pennsylvania is celebrating its Founders’ Day today. Thiel College traces its history to 1866 when five students, three of them women, enrolled in Thiel Hall, an academy located in Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania. In 1870, it moved to Greenville and became Thiel College.
Thiel College has an interesting connection to Amelia Earhart. Although she briefly attended Columbia University, Earhart did not graduate from college. In 1932, Thiel College awarded her an honorary Doctor of Science degree. It was “the first of two she would accept,” said Thiel College President Dr. Earl S. Rudisill in 1937. The other honorary degree was from Oglethorpe University in Atlanta.
In the 1880’s, Earhart’s grandfather, the Reverend David Earhart, helped organize the Pittsburgh Synod which sponsored the college. Earhart’s father, Edwin S. Earhart graduated from Thiel College in 1886.
In 1937, five months after her plane was lost, Thiel College sought to honor her and started a campaign to raise funds. At that time, Dr. Rudisill was quoted in a Pittsburgh newspaper, “Before her last flight, Miss Earhart flew to Cleveland to meet me and expressed a desire…to do something for Thiel College…Apart from her brilliant accomplishments in the science of flight, her devotion to the interest of young womanhood…was a dominant factor of her life.”
There is a road on the Thiel campus named for her and a large photo of her is on display in Thiel’s Langenheim Memorial Library. In 1982, Thiel established an Amelia Earhart Award to honor women of outstanding achievement.
In keeping with the focus of this blog, Thiel College is home to chapters of NPC organizations Alpha Xi Delta, Chi Omega, Zeta Tau Alpha, and Sigma Kappa. The men’s fraternities on campus are Delta Sigma Phi, Kappa Sigma, Phi Theta Phi, and Sigma Phi Epsilon.
© Fran Becque www.fraternityhistory.com 2013, All rights reserved.
