Simmons University (Simmons College until 2018) is a private women focused undergraduate university and private co-educational graduate school in Boston, Massachusetts. It was established in 1899. Simmons was founded in 1899 with a bequest by John Simmons, a wealthy clothing manufacturer in Boston. Simmons founded the college based on the belief that women ought to live independently by offering a Liberal Arts education for undergraduate women to integrate into professional work experience. Simmons is a member of the Colleges of the Fenway consortium, which also includes Emmanuel College, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, and Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Simmons absorbed Garland Junior College in 1976. Wheelock College, a former member, merged with Boston University to become the Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. Simmons graduated its first African American student in 1914. Furthermore, Simmons was one of the few private colleges not to impose admission quotas on Jewish students for the first half of the 1900s. The undergraduate program is women-centered, with approximately 1800 students enrolled in the 2012–2013 academic year. The graduate schools (Library and Information Science, Social Work, Health Sciences, Business Management, and an Arts and Sciences program that provides degrees in Education, Communications Management, Gender and Cultural Studies, Public Policy and Liberal Arts) are coed, and have about 3,000 students. The school’s MBA program is the first in the world designed specifically for women. The co-ed online MBA program, MBA@Simmons, was founded in 2016. In November 2014, the institution released an explicit policy on the acceptance of transgender students, claiming a strong tradition of empowering women and challenging traditional gender roles and a “rich history of inclusion.” Its undergraduate program accepts applicants who are assigned female at birth as well as those who self-identify as women, making Simmons the third women-centered college in the United States to accept transgender women. Government documentation of gender is not required. Graduate programs are co-educational, so gender identity is not of concern.[