, a graduate of
Harvard Law School, founded Deep Springs. Deep Springs was founded in 1917 by
L. L. Nunn, a
business magnate who made his fortune building
alternating current power plants in the
Western United States. Nunn's first projects—a hydroelectric plant in
Telluride, Colorado, and the
Olmsted Power Station in
Provo, Utah—served as the foundation for his inspiration to create a new type of educational institution. As it became difficult to find enough engineers capable of living under rough conditions, he began schooling local men and pursued an interest in education. Nunn eventually sold his industrial assets to fund the
Telluride Association, an educational trust based at
Cornell University, and the
Telluride House. After becoming dissatisfied with the association's mission, he founded Deep Springs and helped in its administration until his death in 1925. The establishment of Deep Springs was a reaction to what Nunn saw as a decline in academic standards in traditional American colleges. His philosophy governing Deep Springs focused strictly around the pursuit of "academics, labor, and self-governance", something he dubbed the "three pillars" which supported the "whole man". The inclusion of manual labor in a college's educational program was unusual in 1917, but a number of so-called
manual labor colleges had existed in the United States in the 19th century—including, at one time,
Oberlin College, which Nunn attended. By the early 1860s, most had either closed or had abandoned their manual labor programs. Nunn's pillars entailed students playing an active role in the administration of the college by laboring in the field and contributing to student meetings during committees, which Nunn believed was an effective method of producing "leaders for a democratic society". To this end, the
board of trustees, which Nunn established to preserve the college's traditions, contained one—later two—seats that were reserved for student trustees, who were elected by the
student body and currently remain with full voice and voting rights. Due to his correspondence with these early student bodies, Nunn decided the college would provide student housing and would not include a
tuition. In the 1990s, the school's leadership debated transitioning the college to be
coeducational. Whereas many women in the Telluride Association advocated for the change, a large portion of the school's alumni wished to keep its status as a men's college. Though the board of Deep Springs voted against making any change in 1994, in 1998 the college accepted a $1.8 million low-interest loan from Telluride under the condition that Deep Springs would begin admitting women by 2019. In 2011, the college's trustees voted to begin accepting female students in the summer of 2013 but became embroiled in legal challenges which were lodged against the trustees' action. The challengers disputed the authority of the college's board to change the admissions policy and included an injunction preventing the college from accepting female students until at least the 2018–2019 academic year. On April 13, 2017, the
California Court of Appeal ruled that the college could admit women in
Hitz v. Hoekstra. With the
Supreme Court of California declining to hear an appeal, the board of trustees voted once again to admit women, with the first female students arriving in July 2018. ==Curriculum ==