A guide to Lake Erie College

Lake Erie College is a private higher education institution located in the American state of Ohio. A small institution with less than 1000 students, the college is now coeducational after being founded as a women-only school. This college boasts an alumni of over 10,000 former students and is globally renowned for its equine studies programme. An overview of the college follows in this article.

History and location

Lake Erie College traces its origins back to 1847, and the foundation of the Willoughby Female Seminary. This college was part of a nationwide seminary movement in the United States, with the focus of the education provided tending towards teacher training, home making and what was termed preparation for motherhood. Education By 1859, the institution had mutated into the Lake Erie Female Seminary and throughout the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the college provided an education which most of its students regarded as a part of preparing them for married life rather than improving their career prospects. Development The college continued to develop throughout the 20th century, and in the 1970s, it began to admit male students with the creation of the all-male Garfield Senior College. The gender split in the student body is now usually around 60 per cent to
40 per cent in favour of female students, according to the university's figures. Infrastructure The main campus of the college is located in Painesville, Ohio, some 30 miles west of Cleveland. There are 18 buildings on the 60 acre campus, while the George M. Humphrey Equestrian Centre is located five miles south of the campus in concord Township. This facility consists of accommodation for up to 100 horses and a
1000-seat arena on its 85 acre site.

Learning and lifestyle

The college's learning ethos is based upon a liberal arts foundation and offers potential students 33 undergraduate majors and master's degrees in business administration and education. There are usually an average of 900 undergraduate students enrolled at the college, with another 200 or so taking advantage of the opportunity to study beyond graduate level. A four-year college, there is, according to the college's own figures, a teacher to student ratio of 14:1, with an average class size of 14. Around sixty per cent of the college's students are from the state of Ohio, with the rest coming from a total of 33 other American states and four foreign countries. The college is particularly known for its equine studies programmes. There are three equine studies majors available at the college, these being Equine Entrepreneurship, Equestrian Teacher/Trainer and Equine Business & Facility Management. All these focus on preparing students for turning their love for horses into a career and even a vocation.