Coordinates: 41°41′12.72″N 73°53′42.68″W / 41.6868667°N 73.8951889°W / 41.6868667; -73.8951889

Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over 1,000 acres (4.0 km²) and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International, designed over the course of the college’s history by a range of prominent architects, including James Renwick Jr., Eero Saarinen, Marcel Breuer, and Cesar Pelli. In a designated arboretum, the campus features more than 200 species of trees, a native plant preserve, and a 400-acre (1.6 km²) ecological preserve.

Vassar was founded as a women's college in 1861 and became coeducational in 1969.

Vassar was the first of the Seven Sisters colleges, higher education schools then strictly for women, and historically sister institutions to the Ivy League. It was founded by its namesake, brewer Matthew Vassar, in 1861 in the Hudson Valley, about 70 mi (115 km) north of New York City. The first person appointed to the Vassar faculty was the astronomer Maria Mitchell, in 1865. Vassar adopted coeducation in 1969. However, immediately following World War II, Vassar accepted a very small number of male students on the G.I. Bill. Because Vassar's charter prohibited male matriculants, the graduates were given diplomas via the University of the State of New York. These were reissued under the Vassar title after the school formally became co-educational. The decision to formally become co-ed came after its trustees declined an offer to merge with Yale University, its sibling institution, in the wave of mergers between the historically all-male colleges of the Ivy League and their Seven Sisters counterparts.

Lisa Valerie Kudrow (born July 30, 1963) is an American actress. She gained worldwide recognition in the '90s for portraying Phoebe Buffay in the television sitcom Friends, for which she received many accolades including an Emmy Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Kudrow has appeared in many films including Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997), Analyze This (1999), Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001), Happy Endings (2005), P.S. I Love You (2007), Bandslam (2008), Hotel for Dogs (2009) and Easy A (2010).

Lisa Kudrow was born in Encino, Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Nedra S. (née Stern), a travel agent, and Dr. Lee N. Kudrow (born 1933), a headache specialist and physician. Her ancestors emigrated from Belarus and lived in the village of Ilya, in the Minsk area, and her great-grandmother was murdered in the Holocaust. Kudrow was raised in a middle-class Jewish family and has an older sister, Helene Marla (born 1960), and an older brother, Santa Monica neurologist David B. Kudrow (born 1957). She is the niece of composer/conductor Harold Farberman. In 1979, at the age of 16, she underwent rhinoplasty to reduce the size of her nose.