Smith’s Distinctive Strength
The Essential Elements
Since 1871, at each stage of women’s success, Smith has been an innovator, adding strength to its foundation.
Throughout the college’s history, Smith graduates, consistent with their education and against the grain of their time, built careers and led civic institutions. In their professional work, their families, and their communities, they provided leadership, asserting their intelligence, capacity and competence in an often-hostile world. They were pioneers. They were the first women in the National Academy of Sciences, and they led the early feminists. They were prominent literary figures, poets and journalists. They were willful, influential First Ladies and the first women to chair the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. They took CEO roles early on in NGOs and business, and rowed across the Atlantic alone. They understood their debt to Smith and retained powerful loyalties.
That tradition endures. Smith College has always been and remains a distinguished liberal arts college for women. Today it serves some 2,750 undergraduate students, making it one of the largest liberal arts colleges in the country. It has preserved an enviable student-faculty ratio of 9:1, equivalent to its peers among the leading liberal arts colleges, but has a faculty of 282, almost double that of most premier colleges. It has acquired many of the attributes of a small research-intensive, student-centered university, with a thousand course offerings in an open curriculum. It offers its students one of the finest settings for teaching and learning in the world.
Smith finds scholars who want to teach. It recruits its faculty from the best research universities, in competition with the leading academic institutions in the country, routinely recruiting its first choices. It pays competitively, choosing to compensate in the top quarter of its peers. The faculty, since 1999, teaches a 2/2+ course load, with one of the most comprehensive sabbatical policies available to any liberal arts college, equivalent to that of an ambitious research university.
Smith is located on a beautiful 147-acre Olmsted-designed campus, encompassing one of the nation’s oldest botanic gardens. It fits seamlessly into Northampton, Massachusetts, part of the Pioneer Valley, where Sophia Smith lived. Both faculty and staff live in desirable and reasonably affordable housing in Northampton or the nearby hill towns. The location itself greatly aids in recruitment and retention. Northampton is a vigorous, prosperous and textured city of 30,000, a college town in the best tradition of the genre. Boasting a vibrant downtown arts, commercial and dining district, it is routinely cited as “one of the best small cities in America.” The college—located on the edge of the downtown—is a short drive from each member of the Five College Consortium, made up of Mount Holyoke, Smith, Amherst, and Hampshire colleges, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Together, they provide a critical mass of distinguished faculty and selective students that rivals that of a metropolis.
At Smith, faculty and students are supported by a talented, dedicated, and long-serving staff, a crucial element of the college community. Staff members support the Smith mission, provide essential academic support, inform student life and provide professional talent to a highly competent administration.
Unusual Opportunity
Smith challenges its students with a vigorous, engaged academic program. It has long offered an open and demanding curriculum, built deeply into the life of the college. The open curriculum has three requirements: a writing-intensive course in the first year, the selection of a major, and at least half of the courses taken outside of the major department. Students may take a multidisciplinary concentration in addition to their major, a new offering that is increasingly popular.
Students choose their intellectual pathway in the context of a committed liberal arts tradition. From the moment they arrive at Smith, long before they choose a major, they work closely with a faculty adviser to chart their personal and academic paths. The Smith advising program is a serious commitment for both faculty and students, and makes the rich choices of a liberal arts college meaningfully available to each student.
Unlike many institutions with an open curriculum, Smith students have increasingly chosen science and engineering courses of study. The proportion of the student body choosing science or engineering has risen steadily over the last decade and now stands at 35 percent.
Smith’s focus on science and engineering received a substantial boost in 1999 when the board of trustees voted to establish the Picker Engineering Program, the nation’s first (and as of 2010 still only accredited) engineering program exclusively for women. In 2010, the Picker program moved into its new home, Ford Hall, a $73 million, 140,000-square-foot facility, which also houses computer science, molecular biology, chemistry and biochemistry.
In 1918, the college established the Smith College School for Social Work to prepare social workers to provide mental health services to traumatized soldiers. The school has grown to become one of the leading graduate schools in clinical social work in the country, offering the MSW and the PhD to both women and men. The school and its mission fit firmly in the Smith tradition.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Smith challenged its students to engage globally. In 2011, with a record nineteen Fulbright fellows, Smith was among the top-producing colleges in the country, and over the last six years Smith has produced more Fulbright fellows than any other liberal arts college.
When Smith launched its study-abroad programs, the college had an excellent foundation in foreign languages and international studies. Study abroad quickly became a signature program and attracted a very large percentage of the class. To this day, Smith has a strong representation in Europe, with programs in Paris, Florence, Hamburg and Geneva. In more recent years, the college has expanded its scope to East Asia. In 2012, Smith entered into a partnership in Malaysia, led by Smith alumnae, to help create the Asian Women’s Leadership University, an undertaking that complements the Asian presence that Smith has built over the years.
Last year Smith joined the State Department and four women’s colleges (Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke and Wellesley) to establish the Women in Public Service Project, a partnership to increase the participation of women in public service and political leadership throughout the world.
In the college, international and global study has continuously expanded. Smith teaches 12 languages, and just under half of Smith graduates spend time abroad during their Smith stay. In 2010, the college ranked second in the nation in the number of undergraduates who spend a full year studying abroad.
Purposeful engagement with the wider world is a central theme of the Smith Design for Learning,
the college’s strategic plan, which was created to deepen students’ capacities for leadership by
connecting classroom experience with global concerns and societal challenges. The plan established
four new centers: in global studies; environment, ecological design and sustainability; community
collaboration; and work and life. The centers align related resources to provide context for internships
and independent projects and to respond to emerging student and scholarly interests. The Smith
Design also highlights the centrality of a culture of research to the Smith experience, championing
the student-faculty research collaborations that have become widespread and celebrated across the
institution. The Praxis program, which provides every student access to a paid summer internship
in a relevant career or academic field, is a signature experience of the junior year, emblematic
of Smith’s commitment to preparing women for lives of influence, achievement and fulfillment.
Smith Finances
Over the course of 130 years, Smith alumnae and leadership built one of the largest endowments of a liberal arts college. The endowment stood at $1.4 billion in FY 2008, just before the great recession. Its valued declined by 27 percent during the recession, but with investment returns of 16 percent and 19 percent in FY 2010 and FY 2011, the Smith endowment regained its position and is again at $1.4 billion. Income from the endowment supports roughly one-third of college activities. The endowment is managed by Investure, an external firm formed in 2003, which provides sophisticated management expertise—and top-tier returns—typically associated with major university endowments.
Smith has been especially well managed financially, guided by a knowledgeable and vigorous board, and an effective administration. The college had unrestricted revenues of $202.7 million in 2011, with expenses of $196.5 million. The spending rate for the endowment grew only slightly in the recession from a targeted rate of 4.75 percent. The college leadership made prompt and effective cuts, which were painful for the community but meant that Smith adapted swiftly, and in FY 2012, the college remains on strong financial ground.
The Smith Community
Smith built its endowment because the women who graduated understood, vividly, the importance of the college in their own lives and in the lives of women the world over. Smith charted the path and opened the door—personally for them and publicly for women in every walk of life. These women form a large network; they routinely aid contemporary alumnae, and they contribute generously.
Smith has 45,000 alumnae. Today, more than half of Smith alumnae contribute over a five-year period and just under 40 percent contribute annually. The college raises between $40 million and $60 million in new commitments each year, often with a large proportion in the form of bequests, a pattern similar to other women’s colleges. The alumnae, parents and friends of the institution have documented philanthropic potential in excess of most liberal arts colleges. Support for the college has been impressive, and the opportunities for growth are equally impressive.
Smith is an exceptionally strong liberal arts college with deep historical roots; an excellent faculty; a fine location; a formidable endowment; and a large, loyal and accomplished alumnae body.
