Betsey Stockton

More than 100 years before the first woman received an M.Div. degree from Princeton Theological Seminary, Betsey Stockton was educated at PTS. Stockton was a slave born into the home of Robert Stockton in 1798.  She was a nurse, cook, and seamstress for Robert’s daughter until the age of twenty, when she was freed. Betsey Stockton was taught by several Seminary students, and in 1822 she went to serve as a missionary in Hawaii. She was the first never-married woman to work as a Presbyterian missionary.

Muriel Van Orden Jennings

Muriel Van Orden Jennings was the first woman to graduate with a professional degree for ministry from PTS in 1932. After graduating from Radcliffe College with an A.B. (to become the B.A.), Jennings came to PTS in 1928 to pursue a theological education. At that time, while the Seminary allowed a few wives of male students to audit classes, the Seminary specifically outlawed the granting of degrees to women. Determined to receive a degree, Jennings earned permission from the faculty and trustees to enroll in a full-time program provided that she “did not disturb the men, that she carried a full schedule of courses, and that her grades matched those of the men.” After three years of study, Jennings ranked number three in her class, but largely because of the opposition of one professor, she did not receive a degree. Rather than giving up, she enrolled in the Th.M. program in 1931. That year the professor died, and after she completed the requirements for the Th.M., the Seminary awarded her both the TH.B. (M.Div.) and the Th.M. in 1932. She went on to work in ministry throughout the Northeast, leading Bible studies for adults and youth. In 1982, PTS honored Jennings with its Distinguished Alumna Award.

Ruth Koltholff Kirkman, Ethel Cassel Driskill, Ruth Gittel Gard, Evelyn Lytle, Anne Marie Melrose, Marion Stout Wilson, and Mary Kathryn Healey

In 1944 when the Tennent School of Christian Education and PTS merged, between thirty and forty women became the first group of female students at PTS. They lived in Tennent Hall, which was for many years the only place where women were housed. In 1947, the first class of women graduated from the Seminary, including Ruth Koltholff Kirkman with a B.D., and Ethel Cassel Driskill, Ruth Gittel Gard, Evelyn Lytle, Anne Marie Melrose, Marion Stout Wilson, and Mary Kathryn Healey with Master of Religious Education degrees.

Jane Molden

Jane Molden was the first African American woman to graduate from PTS, receiving a Master of Religious Education degree in 1952. She lived with the other female students in Tennent Hall, which allowed them to form close friendships with one another, but kept them socially isolated from the rest of the campus because they could not join the eating clubs as full members. Molden reflected on her time living in Tennent, remembering that the Seminary “was a little short on establishing a spirit of fellowship.” She went on to serve as a campus minister at Iowa State University, where she was an activist for equal pay for women.

Harriet Prichard

Harriet Prichard, a 1954 Master of Religious Education graduate of Princeton Seminary, was the second woman appointed to the Princeton Seminary faculty. She was appointed instructor in Christian education in 1957, and in 1959 is promoted to assistant professor of Christian education. She served on the faculty until 1961, and went on to serve several congregations in California as director of Christian education.

Freda Gardner

Freda Gardner joined the PTS faculty in 1961, and in 1967 she was given tenure, becoming the Seminary’s first female tenured professor. She was later promoted to associate professor and then full professor. She was named Educator of the Year by the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 1991, and in 1999 was elected as moderator of the General Assembly, the church’s highest elected position.

Katharine Doob Sakenfeld

Katharine Doob Sakenfeld joined the Princeton Seminary faculty in 1970 in the field of Old Testament. She is now the William Albright Eisenberger Professor of Old Testament, and the director of Ph.D. studies. In 2007 she was president of the Society of Biblical Literature. She was very likely the first woman to celebrate communion in Miller chapel.

Sang Chang

Sang Chang (Ph.D., 1977) has served as president of Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea, the largest women’s university in the world. She has been vice chair of Korea’s Council on Democratic and Peaceful Reunification, and a member of the Public Official Ethics Committee of the Ministry of Administration and Home Affairs. She was also briefly prime minister of Korea. She was named a Distinguished Alumna of the Seminary in 2003.

Phyllis Trible

The Women in Church and Ministry Lecture was inaugurated in 1990 and is still an important lecture series at PTS. The 1990 lecture was delivered by Phyllis Trible, who at the time was professor of Old Testament at Union Theological Seminary in New York. She now serves as professor of biblical studies at Wake Forest University Divinity School.

Mary Lee Fitzgerald

Mary Lee Fitzgerald attended Princeton Theological Seminary in the late 1950s and went on to a career as an educator. She has been a teacher, an administrator, and the first female commissioner of education for the State of New Jersey. She was elected to the PTS Board of Trustees in 1994 and in 2006 became the Board’s first female chair.

Yolanda Pierce

Yolanda Pierce is Princeton Seminary’s Elmer G. Homrighausen Associate Professor of African American Religion and Literature and Liaison with the Princeton University Afro-American Studies Program. She is the first African American woman in a tenured faculty position at Princeton Seminary. She earned her Ph.D. from Cornell University and taught previously in the English Department at the University of Kentucky.

Joyce Bailey and Elizabeth Gordon Edwards

In 1972, Joyce Bailey and Elizabeth Gordon Edwards were the first women to receive the Th.D. degree from Princeton Seminary, now the Ph.D. Elizabeth Edwards went on to each on the Seminary’s New Testament faculty.

Gail Anderson Ricciuti

In 1982, Gail Anderson Ricciuti was the first clergywoman to speak at a Princeton Theological Seminary commencement. She graduated from PTS in 1973 and is currently an associate professor of homiletics at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York. She was the first clergywoman to be named vice moderator of the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church (USA).

Angelique Walker-Smith

In 1995, Angelique Walker-Smith became the first African American woman to receive a Doctor of Ministry degree from Princeton Theological Seminary. She blazed another trail by becoming the first African American executive director-minister of The Church Federation of Greater Indianapolis after her graduation.