Qualla: Salem College

Salem College: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Sableman, CC BY 2.0. Salem College does not advertise its age the way some institutions do. The fact sits quietly in the catalog: a 1772 founding date, an unbroken chain of women teaching women on essentially the same campus for 254 years, the oldest continuously operating women's educational establishment that is still a women's college in the United States. Walk through the gates today and the eighteenth-century Moravian buildings of Old Salem rise on either side, the cobblestones uneven where they have always been uneven, and the small private campus where Sarah Childress Polk studied as a girl now educates students from Nepal and Ethiopia and Myanmar alongside students from across North Carolina.

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Image: Paul Sableman | CC BY 2.0

Salem College: April 22, 1772

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bjoertvedt, CC BY-SA 3.0. On April 22, 1772, the Moravian settlement of Salem opened a primary school for girls and called it, simply, the Little Girls' School. The Moravians had carried their belief in equal education for boys and girls across the Atlantic from central Europe and down the Great Wagon Roa...

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Image: Bjoertvedt | CC BY-SA 3.0

Salem College: Hanna and Anna Maria

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Auntieruth55, CC BY 3.0. The school's record on accepting students from diverse backgrounds is genuinely older than the United States, and it carries complications worth naming. Moravian records show that two enslaved African American girls were accepted at Salem in the eighteenth century. Hanna, age ten...

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Image: Auntieruth55 | CC BY 3.0

Salem College: Sarah Childress Polk and the Long Roll

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bjoertvedt, CC BY-SA 3.0. Among Salem's most prominent alumnae is Sarah Childress Polk, who studied at Salem from 1817 to 1819 and went on to serve as First Lady of the United States from 1845 to 1849 as the wife of President James K. Polk. Other alumnae include Emma Augusta Lehman, an 1864 graduate who t...

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Image: Bjoertvedt | CC BY-SA 3.0

Salem College: What Salem Teaches Now

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Sableman, CC BY 2.0. Salem College today offers a Bachelor of Arts, a Bachelor of Science, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, a Master of Arts in Teaching, and a Master of Education. On February 24, 2021, the college announced a strategic shift to focus on preparing students for health...

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Image: Paul Sableman | CC BY 2.0

Salem College: Spirits and Traditions

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jelliclegerbils, CC BY-SA 3.0. The college's athletic teams compete as the Spirits in NCAA Division III, in the USA South Athletic Conference, which they joined in 2016. Before that they competed in the Great South Athletic Conference, where they accumulated tournament titles in volleyball and regular-season h...

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Image: Jelliclegerbils | CC BY-SA 3.0