Wabash College is a small, private, liberal arts college for men, located in Crawfordsville, Indiana, United States. Founded in 1832 by several Dartmouth College graduates and Midwestern leaders, Wabash is ranked in the top tier of national liberal arts colleges by U.S. News & World Report. The trustees have consistently rejected calls to institute coeducation, leaving Wabash one of the country's three remaining male-only liberal arts colleges.

History

The college was initially named "The Wabash Teachers Seminary and Manual Labor College", a name shortened to its current form by 1851. Many of the founders were Presbyterian ministers, yet nevertheless believed that Wabash should be independent and non-sectarian. Patterning it after the liberal arts colleges of New England, they resolved "that the institution be at first a classical and English high school, rising into a college as soon as the wants of the country demand."

Among these ministers was Caleb Mills, who became Wabash College's first faculty member. Dedicated to education in the then-primitive Mississippi Valley area, he would come to be known as the father of the Indiana public education system.