Feb 20, 2014 09:25 AM EST By Jaleesa Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

One of the oldest women's undergraduate colleges in the United States may soon go coed, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

Chatham University in Pennsylvania is considering admitting men into their undergraduate programs for the first time in the school's history, school officials announced.

University president Esther Barazzone said economic pressures and enrollment realities are a few of the reasons the all-female undergraduate college is considering going coed, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

School officials said they are considering the coed option primarily out of concern about "having enough undergraduates in an era in which most female college applicants don't want a women's college," Insider Higher Ed reported.

Barazzone also said the potential move was not a retreat from the school's woman-centered mission, and would represent an opportunity to strengthen the university as a whole and avoid faculty layoffs.

"If this was just about economics, Chatham would have gone coed in 1990," she said, insisting that it waged an "all-out effort" to avoid doing so.

In an interview with The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Barazzone said the school's financial position is not the driving issue. She noted that Chatham's endowment - which shrank about 30 percent from $60 million after 2008 and the recession - has since rebounded to $75 million.

The university's Board of Trustees on Friday voted to study and consider proposals to make all undergraduate education at the school coeducational; this could lead to a board vote by June, university officials said, according to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

If the school's trustees approve the idea, men could enroll in Chatham's undergraduate programs as soon fall 2015.

Chatham University, like many women's colleges, has coeducational graduate programs, but its undergraduate programs have remained single-sex, Inside Higher Ed reported. 

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