Our Alumnae and Pave the Way Make Their Mark

Girls have been at the heart of Cushing Academy from the start. In 1865, the idea of a coeducational boarding school was at least progressive and perhaps even radical. Other schools of the era were mostly founded for boys only, with a smaller handful created solely for girls. But the Academy’s founder, Thomas Parkman Cushing, wanted everyone to be educated.

Ending up fully coed, however, was a bit of a quirk of circumstance. Mr. Cushing intended for there to be two schools, one for boys and one for girls, with at least a quarter of a mile in between. Funding for that vision fell short, so the trustees won permission from Cushing’s heirs to educate boys and girls together in the same building. In a nod to the founder’s intentions and the mores of the time, the original building had separate doors, one for boys and one for girls, according to

Cushing Yesterday and Today, published in 2016 for the school’s sesquicentennial.

Even 100 years after Cushing’s founding, “the coeducational boarding school is, to say the least, unusual. Public opinion regarding such is generally skeptical,” wrote Frank Prentice Read in Cushing 1865–1965. Over the next quarter century, of course, that sentiment changed rapidly. Nearly every New England boarding school went coed. But Cushing was the first.

Cushing’s alumnae are out front as well. Whether it is Helen Frame Peters ’66, who was often the only woman in the room on Wall Street, Babetta “Babs” Marrone ’70, doing cutting-edge climate change research, tech CEO Maya Rogers ’96, or entrepreneur Rachel Sommers ’07, Cushing women have taken their progressive start and are making the future their own. Here are some of their stories.