More than 400 guests—including College of Education freshmen Edith Russell (center) and Judy Jarvis (right)—attended Northeastern’s first-ever reception for freshman women, hosted by new president Asa S. Knowles. But Knowles was thinking beyond punch and cookies—he realized dorms and programs geared to women were missing from the university’s menu.

That fall, a record number of women (227!) had enrolled at NU. Still, Knowles saw the dearth of women in academe as “a great waste of one of our nation’s most precious resources.”

Mind you, the fairer sex was no stranger to NU. Women had attended the Automobile School during World War I, and had been enrolled as full-fledged Northeastern students since 1943. However, coeds were still a vast minority in 1959, just 7 percent of the total Basic College enrollment.

So Knowles pushed to roll out the welcome wagon. In 1960, NU revamped existing facilities to house 200 coeds; two years later, the university began making plans to construct a new women’s dorm, named Speare Hall. Programs that would appeal to women were also prioritized: For instance, the university began negotiations to merge with Boston-Bouvé and found the College of Nursing.

Feminism was on the verge of rocking the nation. But Northeastern already understood that women were more than sugar and spice.