Originally the brainchild of Bryn Mawr president M. Carey Thomas, the program was funded by philanthropists such as John D. Rockefeller Jr. and taught by distinguished faculty drawn from local institutions.

Bryn Mawr College President M. Carey Thomas conceived the idea for the school some time after visiting Workers' Educational Association (WEA) programs in England.

[2] According to Thomas, the inspiration came to her in the form of a vision while she was traveling in the Sahara Desert in 1919: One afternoon at sunset I was sitting on my golden hilltop, rejoicing that British women had just been enfranchised and American women would soon be politically free ... when suddenly, as in a vision, I saw that out of the hideous world war might come as a glorious aftermath international industrial justice and international peace...I also saw as part of my vision that the coming of equal opportunity for the manual workers of the world might be hastened by utilizing the deep sex sympathy that women now feel for each other before it has had time to grow less.

[3]In the fall of 1920, Thomas consulted with Dean Hilda Worthington Smith and Professor Susan M. Kingsbury about starting a summer school for working women.

[14] In their overall approach, Thomas and Smith drew on the example of the WEA programs[4] and the educational philosophy of John Dewey,[15] with a strong emphasis on diversity and democratic process.

They intentionally brought together representatives of widely disparate constituencies: trade union leaders and privileged Bryn Mawr alumni; mill workers who had left school at the age of 12 and university professors; union and non-union workers from a variety of industries across the U.S.; native-born Americans and immigrants from Russia, Italy, and Eastern Europe; Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.

[17] A 1929 pamphlet describes the Plan of Teaching as: "Small classes in Economics, English Literature, Composition, Public Speaking, Science and Psychology.

[18] In addition to regular classes, students attended talks by an impressive array of guest lecturers, including John Dewey,[15] W.E.B.

Du Bois, Harold Laski, Frances Perkins, Walter Reuther, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, and Norman Thomas.

M. Carey Thomas warned Smith in a letter not to "complicate" matters, and quoted her late friend Susan B. Anthony: "Do not mix reforms, but drive straight through to your goal looking neither to the right nor to the left."

It reopened in 1936, but the damage had been done; funding dwindled, and the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry closed for good in 1938.

[24] Historian Rita Heller, who conducted a survey of the students in 1982, found that while some of the respondents were ambivalent about the program's usefulness, most credited it with improving their self-image and social skills and believed the school had helped them advance in their careers.