The original 1891 editorial board of The Rocky Mountain Collegian featured two women: Celia May Southworth and Irene C. Edwards. Since then, hundreds have followed in their footsteps.

The Collegian, at the time, was merely following university early advancement in the field of women’s inclusion. Colorado Agricultural College, the first title of Colorado State University, opened in 1870. In 1874, the first graduating class featured three students, one of which was a woman, Libby Coy Lawrence, who received a Bachelor of Science from the handful of classes the university offered at the time.

By the time 1891 rolled around, when The Collegian was founded, the university began to admit more women and offer liberal arts courses, which were considered more “sensible” for women.

Southworth and Edwards were the first two women of The Collegian, with their names printed in typewriter text alongside their four male counterparts on the very first masthead of The Collegian. Edwards was the society editor, in charge of publishing marriages, social events and popular culture items. Southworth was the literary editor, a role focused on publishing poem and essay submissions to the paper.

Southworth in particular was considered to be a “a feisty, intelligent advocate of college journalism,” according to “The Collegian’s First 100 Years,” a book published in 1991 to celebrate the paper’s 100th birthday. The book said Southworth believed women could compete in any field that a man was in, and that femininity was a source of power and not weakness; she believed happiness was the best key to beauty and that a circle of strong friends enhanced one’s courage.

“Every girl should have a higher ideal in life than marriage for social rank or position,” Southworth wrote in 1891. “She should base her standard of the opposite sex on strength of mind and purity of morals. The safe way is to choose as friends this who are brave and noble enough to rise above the social rottenness of the day.”

Southworth believed governance and policy lacked womanly qualities and called for women’s involvement in government to promote “eternal truth and justice.”

Southworth is often considered to be the original woman voice of The Collegian, keeping in touch with the paper years after her graduation through letters and poems that were published.

Following Southworth’s trailblazing footsteps, dozens more strong women leaders followed at The Collegian. Mayme Pendergast was the first woman editor in chief in 1896-97. Nellie Beach followed suit in 1903-04. Elizabeth H. D’Amour and Cozette Hapney, editors in chief in 1913-14 and 1943-44, respectively, stood at the helm and safeguarded the pages during World War I and II. In 1934, the entire editorial board was almost all woman-run, with the exception of the features editor.

These names represent 133 years of intelligent, trailblazing women at The Collegian who have enacted real change at CSU. In 1945, copy editor Jean Herdman suggested the idea of CAM the Ram, our enduring mascot. In 1955, Connie Shoemaker, managing editor, was upset that a journalism department did not exist at CSU. Her husband, Floyd Shoemaker, was serving as an editor, and together, they contacted high school journalism students for a visit to CSU, which pressured the university to create the department, of which Floyd Shoemaker was the very first chair.

The Collegian has forged the path for women in media since its inception. Today, women make up 46% of journalists, according to Pew Research Center. A study by Reuters found that 24% of the top newsroom positions are women.

In recent history, The Collegian has been almost entirely woman-dominated from the top down, with more woman editorial staff members and editors in chief.

Allison Sylte served as editor in chief of The Collegian for the 2012 fall semester. Sylte currently works as a public relations writer and senior specialist for CSU Marketing and Communications.

“If you mess up, obviously people will call you out on it,” Sylte said of her time at The Collegian. “And I think that’s cool. Looking back in my time at The Collegian, I think what was unique about it — and earlier in my career — was it was back when the internet was fun. … So I remember our team found out, like, learned what (Search Engine Optimization) was, and so we were writing (stories with) really (high) SEOs and pieces, and we were looking at analytics.”

Sylte started as a staff reporter her first year year before becoming news editor her sophomore year, content managing editor her junior year and editor in chief for a semester her senior year before pursuing an internship.

Sylte said her first thoughts upon getting the job were “don’t screw this up,” in relation to the history of the publication but said the job experience gave her a unique connection to the campus community.

“I think I had an idea of what was happening on campus that I would not have had if I weren’t working in a newsroom, which is really cool,” Sylte said. “Specifically as a woman, I think it’s good to develop a sense of how to be a leader and how to be an assertive early in your career. I think the lessons I’ve learned in managing a team and making sometimes hard decisions really did help me just as I moved on in my professional career, and I think too, readers are a little more critical toward women.”

Another one of The Collegian‘s many former woman editors in chief is Allison Sherry, who served as editor at the turn of the century, from 1999 to 2000. Sherry is currently Colorado Public Radio’s justice reporter after six years as a Washington, D.C., correspondent for both The Denver Post and the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

When Sherry started at The Collegian, the publication did not hire first-years. Sherry was eager to join the publication nonetheless and asked her first editor-in-chief for a role “basically doing anything.”

“(My first editor) was super nice and kind of became a really good friend and mentor,” Sherry said. “And she did let me work. So I got a job as a reporter that year, and it was really fun. I didn’t have a car, so I was striding around town and on my bike and trying to do stories. It sort of set the scene for me.”

When Sherry became editor in chief her senior year, she said her experiences as a first-year year influenced how she guided her staff.

“Going into leadership at The Collegian, I wanted to be inspirational to people who were younger than me,” Sherry said. “When I was a Collegian editor in chief, you know, (I was) trying to be a good leader for everybody who worked there, doing things that I am still proud of, like … putting together an editorial board, which we hadn’t had before, … and hiring the woman who was the editor of opinion pages. She was Muslim, and that was fun to bring her on board because we hadn’t ever had a face or a voice like that to run the op-eds, and she wrote her own op-eds too.”

In Sherry’s career, most of her mentors have been men, but she emphasized the special touch women bring to leadership roles.

“I just I think women, sometimes … tend to be a little bit more empathetic, and I think they make decisions sometimes a little different than men,” Sherry said. “I do appreciate the talks of newsrooms run by women. The Denver Post is one, … and I think that there is a little bit of a sixth sense that women have sometimes that men just kind of don’t see.”

Reach Allie Seibel at life@collegian.com or on Twitter @allie_seibel_.