Planning for Kirkland began during the 1962-1963 academic year, at the instigation of then-Hamilton College president Robert W. McEwen [REF].
A study and consideration in the form of an 'intimate history' by Samuel Fisher Babbitt, Kirkland's only president - Limited Engagement: Kirkland College 1965-1978, An Intimate History of the Rise and Fall of a Coordinate College for Women - provides an in-depth, first-person account of Kirkland's brief existence.