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Smith offers a broad and deep academic program, with majors in 46 fields of study. The
college has historic strengths in the fine and performing arts and in the foreign
languages and international study, including an active study abroad program. In
the social sciences, Smith has focused on policy and social issues, augmented by
work in the Department of Education and Child Study, the School for Social Work,
and interdisciplinary programs. More recently, the college has strengthened
its emphasis on the sciences, stressing opportunities for student research and establishing
an engineering program with explicit interdisciplinary ties to other sciences and
the liberal arts.
An ongoing faculty discussion about the curriculum seeks to define the core capacities
that the faculty feels every Smith graduate should develop in her time here, including
critical reasoning, writing, and quantitative skills. In this regard,
it is interesting to review students’ self-assessment upon entering Smith in
comparison to our peers. Our students report higher self-assessment in the
areas of creativity and artistic ability but report lower self-confidence in math
ability, drive to achieve, and time management skills.
In the course of their college years, Smith students report significant growth in
their skills and capacities. Smith compares very well relative to its peers
in regard to student perceptions of their own growth in writing, public speaking,
learning on one’s own, leadership, placing issues in perspective, foreign languages,
arts appreciation, and awareness of social issues. Students report less growth
relative to their peers in the areas of quantitative skills, identifying moral and
ethical issues, and understanding the process of science and experimentation.
Smith has experienced gradual shifts in majors and course enrollments over the past
twenty years, with declines in humanities and social sciences offset by increases
in the natural sciences and engineering as well as in interdisciplinary programs. With
30 percent of students majoring in the sciences, Smith far outpaces the national figures
for the proportion of undergraduate degrees to women awarded in the sciences (18 percent). Among
the graduating class, approximately 20 percent earn Latin honors, and 7 percent earn departmental
honors, recognizing successful completion of an honors thesis. These rates
have been fairly steady over time.
Review of the data for academic programs revealed one unexpected finding. While
Smith students rate their academic experiences favorably, they are less likely to
report satisfaction with research opportunities with faculty.
Study abroad, a great strength of Smith’s academic program, has been an area
of sustained review and attention for the college over the past few years. Smith’s
participation rates in these programs are high; Smith ranks first among U.S. baccalaureate
institutions in the percentage of students studying abroad for a full year, and students
give their experiences studying abroad high marks. Challenges in this area
involve the high relative costs of the college’s own junior year abroad programs,
enrollment volatility, the concentration of students abroad in Europe and English-speaking
countries, where expenses are high, and the need for more explicit and effective
connection between students’ experiences abroad and their curricular experiences
at Smith.
Smith’s four-year graduation (83 percent) and persistence (90 percent) rates trail the norms
for its traditional peer group, and compound the admission challenge for the college. Of
those students who choose to leave the college, approximately 50 percent do so for academic
or medical reasons. Others cite as motivations the campus community, lack of social
fit, the single-sex environment, the campus political climate, and too few interesting
social activities.
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Setting
the Context
External trends
Admission &
financial aid
Academic
program
Student life
Diversity
Financial & other resources
Important Issues
Facing Smith
Next Steps in the
Planning Process
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