In the scramble to adjust to the new education laws in the Turkish Republic, the women educators at the American College for Girls in Istanbul had to adapt quickly to numerous changes; moreover, their long-time president, Mary Mills Patrick, had retired abruptly in 1924. Patrick, however, had already laid the groundwork for a secular college and she had long touted the superiority of “non-sectarian” education and boasted of the many Muslim students whom she had enrolled, the most well-known being nationalist heroine Halide Edib. Thus, when the new Turkish Republic emerged, the College could present a strong public show of support for Atatürk and claim its place as premier educator of girls and women in the city it was quickly learning to call Istanbul. Confident of its position, the College threw itself behind Atatürk’s plans for the education and emancipation of women. While the missionaries to the Ottoman Empire had aimed to transform the Near East spiritually, these American women educators in Istanbul now presented themselves as pioneers of progressive feminism, education, democracy, and world peace. But what did the College’s supporters back home in America think about this newly secularized, ex-missionary institution? In the 1920s and 30s the American College for Girls underwent an energetic public relations campaign in order to help Americans accept and support its new purpose as educator of Muslim women, a role it had already begun to assert in 1908 with the Young Turk Revolution. The paper will explore the image of the American College for Girls in American publications, showing how the College carefully balanced its Christian past with its modern American identity, and claimed the role of premier educator of Muslim women in Turkey. Autobiographies, travel books, articles, and lectures by College personnel and others promote it as an ambassador of education and feminism, dedicated not only to supporting American-style democracy and female emancipation, but also to erasing the missionary past and creating new bonds between the U.S. and Turkey.