The College first admitted women in 1870 but the school's relative isolation and lack of women's living quarters tamped coeducational enrollment for decades. The few women who enrolled either boarded with faculty families or were locals who made the daily three-mile trek from Lansing by stagecoach over unpaved Michigan Avenue. The women were educated in the same scientific agriculture courses as men, excepting "practical agriculture." In 1896, the College became one of only fourteen other colleges and universities in America to adopt and meld a home economics curriculum within the liberal arts and sciences program, increasing female enrollment. That same year, the school relocated male students from the old Abbot Hall dormitory to allow for greater a number of women to enroll in the course.