Mount Holyoke Female Seminary was established by educator Mary Lyon, who in 1832 began making plans for a school for the higher education of women that would own its own property and not be a for-profit venture. She enlisted the support of several clergymen and businessmen in and around Ipswich, Massachusetts, where she had been working as a teacher at Ipswich Female Seminary since 1828. Seven of these individuals - David Choate, Daniel Dana, Joseph Felt, George W. Heard, Edward Hitchcock, Asa Howland, and Theophilus Packard - formed a committee in September, 1834 that selected South Hadley, Massachusetts as the location for the school and worked to obtain a charter for the institution from the legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that was granted on February 11, 1836. Mount Holyoke Female Seminary opened on November 7, 1837. The academic program expanded from three to four years in 1861/62 and students who completed the prescribed course of study received diplomas. In the late 1880s, in response to competition from degree-granting women's colleges, Mount Holyoke successfully petitioned the state legislature for a charter change that was granted on March 8, 1888. At that time, the name of the school changed to Mount Holyoke Seminary and College and the first degrees were awarded on June 27, 1889. The Seminary Program that did not lead to a degree was phased out and another change to the charter granted on January 31, 1893 marked the institution's transformation into Mount Holyoke College.