Guide to the Mary Christine Thompson Papers

Mary Christine Thompson, Presbyterian missionary and educator in Egypt and Iran, was born on March 4, 1913 in Oil City, Pennsylvania. Thompson graduated with a B.A. from Muskingum College (New Concord, Ohio) and was appointed to the Egypt Mission by the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (PCUSA) Board of Foreign Missions (BFM) on May 8, 1939. She sailed for the field that December and taught in the Tanta Girls School until 1965, when mission schools began to be administered by the Synod of the Nile (of the Evangelical Church of Egypt). The outbreak of the 1967 Six-Day War kept Thompson from work in Egypt. In 1968, Thompson was appointed to an educational position by the Synod of Iran, where she encountered Frances Mecca Gray, who offered her a position as dean of Damavand College in Tehran, Iran. Thompson worked at Damavand until the Iranian Revolution in 1979. She returned to the United States and settled in New York City, becoming an active member of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. She died in 2005.

Damavand College was an outgrowth of the Iran Bethel School for Girls and named after the highest peak in Iran in 1968. Damavand was created due to Iran Bethel School for Girls alumnae's insistent desire to continue the type of education gained at the school. The early intention of Damavand was to have a private university for women in Iran to set a standard of international excellence in a bi-cultural program without cutting the students off from their roots. Damavand's aim was to prepare young women through education for a more active role in the new Iranian society that was coming into existence. Damavand was a liberal arts school with courses offered which strongly stressed Persian and Western literature, along with the general humanities. Damavand provided an intercultural program to deepen the students' appreciation of the rich cultural traditions of Iran and the Middle East, while also acquainting them more fully with the heritage of western civilization. It was not under the Presbyterian Mission, but rather the Iranian Board of Trustees related to the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Damavand was gifted a twenty-acre campus by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, in 1969, with buildings designed by architects from The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. In February 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran nationalized Damavand.