Rosa Yerenian, class of 1925, was born in Smyrna, Turkey and came to Mount Holyoke after working in Smyrna as a teacher. She was escaping the then ongoing massacres in her home country. She majored in French and graduated with honors in 1925, before she got her master’s degree at Middlebury College in 1938.
After her graduation from Mount Holyoke, Yerenian struggled to find adequate employment, in part due to her nationality and choice of major. She sought help from Mount Holyoke’s Appointment Bureau, which helped her find some positions. She continued to face resistance from potential employers. For example, the Y.W.C.A. wrote that they weren’t comfortable with hiring her in a position of authority, because it might offend Americans who worked for them. She taught at Johnsbury Academy in Vermont as a French teacher until 1942. Enrollment in French classes was becoming less popular, leading to and during World War II, and she would be required to teach subjects other than French at the school. This led her to consider leaving teaching for war work. However, she continued to teach and in 1946, she began working at Macduffie Girls’ School, in Granby, Massachusetts. Macduffie was a girls’ preparatory school where she remained until her retirement in 1968. Yeranian struggled initially as a live-in teacher, but found fulfillment in the personal atmosphere of the school and the education it allowed her to provide.
Yerenian cared deeply about Mount Holyoke, especially the community she found there. While at Mount Holyoke she participated in the Cosmopolitan Club. Upon hearing about the tragic death of Alice Astkig Sourian, x-class of 1930, whom Yerenian met only briefly, she wrote to the Alumnae Association offering corrections on their information about Sourian and requesting that they notify the community.