Citing a need to adapt to changing times, Chatham University trustees on Thursday voted to admit men to the 145-year-old women’s undergraduate college beginning in 2015.

Chatham President Esther Barazzone said the discussion about admitting men has taken on greater urgency in recent years as enrollment slipped. Undergraduate enrollment, which peaked at 725 in 2008, declined to 568 last fall.

The undergraduate college for women was the last single-sex bastion at Chatham, which began life as a women’s college. It includes men and women in graduate, professional and online programs that have developed during the past two decades and represent nearly three-quarters of the university’s total enrollment of 2,170.

Barazzone called the board’s vote, which followed nearly a year of study, “a strategic and historic decision to expand our mission.”

With the vote, Chatham leaves a shrinking pool of single-sex institutions. Nearly 300 women’s colleges dotted the United States six decades ago; only 42 women-only schools remain.

A group of Chatham alumnae who opposed admitting men held a daylong vigil on the Shadyside campus with a mock coffin draped in a Chatham banner with the word “resist” emblazoned on it.

Amanda Nedley, 37, a 1999 Chatham graduate from Upper St. Clair, said although Chatham held several town hall meetings and solicited alumnae comments, it seemed as though alternative proposals went unheard.

“They had no methodology to evaluate these proposals before the vote,” she said.

Others said Chatham’s status as a women’s school was what set it apart from the pack.

Trustee Jane Burger insisted the board weighed alumnae sentiment carefully.

“We have listened. We have responded to their letters. These are women who love Chatham and don’t want to see it change,” she said, adding that opponents of the move represented a small minority of Chatham graduates.

Chatham trustee Louise Brown, who has been on the board for four decades, hailed the vote. She said other women’s colleges have witnessed enrollment increase 30 percent after becoming co-ed.

“I loved Chatham as a student, and it would be wonderful if things could stay the same, but things have changed,” Brown said.

Quoting studies that have shown only 2 percent of females taking the SAT test say they would consider a women’s college, Burger said Chatham hopes to be a market for the other 98 percent, as well as for men.

Officials declined to release the exact vote by the 29-member board, saying only that it was not unanimous but was “overwhelmingly” in favor of the three-part proposal to admit men to the undergraduate college, reorganize the university’s academic units and create an Institute for Women.

Trustees who stayed to address the media after the vote insisted the school remains committed to advancing women’s leadership roles in society.

Board chair Jennifer Potter noted that Chatham will devote $8.5 million — including $2 million in funds raised since February — to the Institute for Women, which will bring the Center for Women’s Entrepreneurship and the Pennsylvania Center for Women & Politics together with a new Women and Health program and Chatham’s department of women’s and gender studies.

Barazzone said faculty and administrators will begin meeting on Monday to plan for the changes.

Kate DiStefano, a 2008 Chatham graduate, predicted disappointed alumnae will direct their charitable dollars elsewhere.

Debra Erdley is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. she can be reached at 412-320-7996 or derdley@tribweb.com.

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