Thomas became the first Dean of Bryn Mawr College, helping shape it into a rigorous institution for women's higher education.
When Bryn Mawr College opened its doors in 1885 near Philadelphia, M. Carey Thomas was appointed its first Dean, a role in which she exercised enormous influence over the academic direction of the fledgling institution. Having earned her own Ph.D. summa cum laude from the University of Zurich in 1882—an extraordinary achievement for a woman at the time, since American universities generally barred women from doctoral programs—Thomas was determined that Bryn Mawr would offer women an education equal in rigor to that available to men at the best universities.
As Dean, she designed a curriculum modeled on the graduate seminar system she had encountered in Europe, insisted on high admission standards, and recruited a distinguished faculty. She fought to ensure that Bryn Mawr's academic standards would not be diluted by the prevailing assumption that women required a gentler, less demanding course of study.
This appointment marked the beginning of Thomas's decades-long campaign to prove that women were intellectually equal to men and deserved access to the same quality of scholarship and research opportunities. Her work as Dean, and later as President beginning in 1894, established Bryn Mawr as one of the foremost women's colleges in the United States, and her educational philosophy influenced the development of women's higher education nationally.