Nationally and internationally, this is the month to celebrate the wide-ranging accomplishments of women all over the world. As a Flickr Commons member, we’re joining with the other Commons institutions to put up photographic sets that recognize and commemorate International Women’s Day. Want to see what we’ve put together? Go to Flickr Commons and do a search for the tag “womensday,” which is what all the institutions have used to identify those photographs that are part of this observation, or take a short cut by clicking here. You can read about the flurry of activity on the indicommons blog. And, if you just want to go straight to our set, check out OSU Archives Celebrates International Women’s Day March 8th. Remember, viewing is good, commenting is better — we want to hear from you, so log in to Flickr and use that comment box!

It’s never enough to put up pictures, so for the next 15 days, we’ll be posting a little bit about each of the women featured in our Flickr set, starting with Alice Biddle. And who better to quote than George Edmonston when celebrating Ms. Biddle, the first woman to graduate from OSU?

“Alice Biddle, from Corvallis, was actually one of three students in Oregon State’s first graduating class in 1870. The other two were men with the last names of Currin and Veach, but Alice is the one we most remember. Perfect grades. Perfect attendance. OSU’s first woman graduate. To top it off, a Bachelor of Science degree in the liberal arts. And she was only 16.”

Want to know more? George has written a wonderful piece on Biddle, which can be found on the Oregon State University Alumni Association page.