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The Hotel Northampton, September 16,
2005
The topic of my talk is the social mission of Smith
College. But first I would like to step back and consider the remarkable ways in
which colleges and universities in the United States developed in relationship to
their communities. Smith has an interesting history in this regard, one result of
which is an unusually rich array of opportunities for partnership between social
agencies and the college.
The United States has the finest system of higher education
in the world. I say this without hesitation. Its strength and value result in large
part from the way in which it developed -- or I should say ways in which it developed.
There are more than 2,000 private, nonprofit and public four-year colleges or universities
in the United States today, each with its own history and governance. This extent
and variety is not merely a curiosity; it is an enormous and widely recognized strength.
The first colleges in the United States were private.
For the most part, they were church related and they were widely dispersed geographically.
In this vast, growing new country, men wanted -- and I say men deliberately -- to
educate clergy and teachers for a growing population expanding into rural territories.
This is a very different pattern from the development of universities in Europe,
which were most often founded in cities and supported with state resources. For example,
Amherst College, across the river, was founded in 1821 by a group of local citizens
to educate “indigent young men of piety and talents for the Christian ministry.” Thus
the idea of social service was central to the missions of American colleges from
the beginning.
In 1862, Congress passed a very important piece of
legislation for higher education, the Morrill Act, which provided land for every
state to establish a public university to serve the educational needs of a growing
populace, providing particular emphasis on instruction in agriculture and engineering.
These are the so-called land grant universities, and every state has one. Massachusetts’ land
grant university is, of course, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, founded
in 1867 on 310 acres, with four faculty members and 56 students. So you see, both
the development of public universities and private colleges was tied closely to the
social needs of a developing country. They were democratic in impulse, extending
the benefits of education to the general population.
Let me now situate Smith College in this picture. Smith,
as I am sure many of you know, was founded by a bequest from Sophia Smith. In 1861,
at the age of 65, Sophia Smith unexpectedly inherited a large fortune. She was the
only surviving child in a family of seven, and none of her siblings had children.
She deliberated a long time before deciding what to do with her inheritance, talking
extensively with her minister, John M. Greene. Thankfully for us, she decided ultimately
to found a college for women. Her purpose was simple, yet profound; she felt that
by the education of women, she could increase their “power for good,” their “weight
of influence in reforming the evils of society.”
Now Sophia Smith was from Hatfield, but she decided
that the new college should be in Northampton, because Northampton, in her words,
was “the best place.” The citizens of Hatfield were so outraged by her
choice that they sought to challenge the will, contending she was not of sound mind
when she wrote it. After all, who could possibly prefer Northampton to Hatfield?
In Sophia Smith’s conversations with her minister,
John Greene, and in John Greene’s subsequent conversations with the trustees
of the new college, very specific and distinctive ideas were developed about the
college’s relationship to the town. They did not want to build their new college
on the model of Mount Holyoke, which had been founded in 1837. Mount Holyoke was
a seminary, not a college, and secluded its students from the town. In contrast,
Smith’s founders very much wanted the college to be part of the town, and they
set up ways to make that happen. Smith students, they declared, should use the town
library -- Forbes Library -- as their library; they should attend Northampton
churches; and they should live in residences that looked like family houses, a decision
in which we see the origin of Smith’s distinctive house system. Their purpose,
in integrating the college so fully with the town, was to teach young women, by example
and context, the social roles they could undertake.
Smith opened its doors 130 years ago, on September
9, 1875, with 14 students and 4 faculty members. The first students had to pass rigorous
entrance examinations in eight subjects, including Latin and Greek. Contemporary
critics, including some from Northampton, felt the demands were too great for women;
a professor of divinity from Yale complained that students were coming down with
brain fever every week because of the misguided attempt to educate them to know as
much as men. People were afraid the college was going to fail, so much so that citizens
owning land along Green Street that the college was seeking to buy to enlarge its
campus, kept dropping the price. Shall I repeat that last phrase?
Of course, the college didn’t fail, and it has
always held fast to the sense of social mission that Sophia Smith articulated. On
the college’s 25th anniversary in 1900, its first president, Laurenus Clark
Seelye, declared this about the accomplishments of the graduates: “As writers,
teachers, and successful workers in varied professions, alumnae have given abundant
proof of their intellectual attainments. Some of them have gone on as teachers and
physicians to foreign lands, and have rendered valuable and heroic services during
the massacres in Armenia and with the Red Cross corps during the wars in Greece and
in Cuba. Many of them have become important agents in charitable work. They have
organized and successfully maintained college settlements among the poor in our great
cities. In cooperation with the alumnae of other colleges, they have investigated
some of the most pressing social needs, and the best methods of satisfying them.”
In 1918, under its third president, William Allan Neilson,
Smith made a bold move, reflecting its commitment to addressing social needs. It
founded a School for Social Work, whose purpose was to treat soldiers suffering shell
shock from their experience in the Great War. Neilson called it the riskiest venture
of his presidency but, like the college, it proved to be a great success. The Northampton
State Hospital provided the site of clinical training, and the Red Cross designated
Smith as its East Coast training center for the psychiatric care of former servicemen.
The year 1917 saw another war effort important in Smith’s
history, one still visibly commemorated on our campus. I am sure that many of you
have noticed the iron gates that stand outside of College Hall, the symbolic entrance
to the college. Known as the Grécourt Gates, they commemorate the work of
the Smith College Relief Unit, a group of formidably courageous alumnae who went
to France in 1917 to rebuild villages that had been destroyed by the war, not returning
until 1920. In 1924, the college erected the gates to commemorate their work and
to symbolize the responsibility every graduate has to use her education for the benefit
of humanity.
I would like now to turn to the present day and talk
about how I see the relationship of Smith to its community. All colleges, whether
they be public or private, large or small, urban or rural, are part of a vital social
contract. They have a responsibility to the communities that they inhabit. Colleges
and universities are extraordinary resources, embodying the benefits of decades -- even
centuries -- of public and private investment. They are extraordinary centers
of knowledge, of intellectual power, of cultural resources. They have books, art,
buildings, but, most importantly, they have people -- faculty, staff, students,
and alumni.
As the recent, and devastating, experience of Hurricane
Katrina has shown, every college can – and must -- extend its resources to
the community. Moreover, institutions can be most effective in doing so when they
extend themselves in ways that are appropriate to their mission.
Smith’s mission is tied vitally to education
and the public good, and for that reason I believe one of our most important local
links is with the public schools, providing, for example, resources for teachers
and tutoring programs for children. We have focused a great deal of our outreach
in that direction, reaching out to principals and teachers to find out how we can
be a partner in meeting their students’ needs. One of my proudest recent accomplishments
is the establishment of an educational outreach office at Smith, a one-stop source
for educators in the Pioneer Valley and beyond to connect readily and meaningfully
and with our faculty and resources, whether regarding exhibitions, performances,
curricula or facilities.
But you represent social agencies, and, I am sure,
are most interested in the ways in which Smith could be a resource for you and the
people you serve. Let me share a few of the ways:
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Smith has a
program, known as Praxis: The Liberal Arts at Work, that provides a summer
internship for every student during her time at the college. Here’s the
neat part: the college pays the stipend. This is very unusual, possibly unique,
and ensures two things: that students who rely on summer earnings need not
forgo important career preparation; and that nonprofits and social service
agencies have access to a pool of talented interns. Eighty-five percent of
the internships students do as part of the Praxis program are in nonprofits,
including the arts and cultural organizations, environmental fields, human
rights and social action, health care, government and NGOs. |
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Smith has a
leadership development program -- the Phoebe Reese Lewis Leadership Program -- in
which a selected group of students partners with a nonprofit organization in
our community to offer consultation services. Last year, the organization they
assisted was Friends of Children; previously, it has been the Academy of Music.
This year they will work on behalf of the Northampton Center for the Arts. |
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Recognizing
that there is nothing like competition to spur people to action, I opened this
academic year by requesting that each student residence take on a significant
service project in the community. The house that commits most generously to
this effort can select a charity of its choice, to which the college will make
a donation in its name. |
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On the staff
side, one of the first things I did at Smith was to develop a policy whereby
every Smith staff member can take one paid day to do community service. Some
have done so in group efforts, others individually. In addition, I have just
authorized a policy enabling Smith employees to take a week of paid leave time
to offer direct voluntary service in the Gulf Coast region, to help with hurricane
relief and rebuilding. |
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Finally, SOS
is the Service Organizations of Smith; this office is the central clearinghouse
for volunteerism for members of the Smith community, particularly students.
It is usually a good first stop for an agency seeking assistance. |
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In partnering with you, one thing I will ask is that
you and your staff keep in mind the educational component of service in the lives
of students. What makes a good service opportunity for a college student? There are
three critical criteria:
It is clear that colleges and universities, in the mind-power
and person-power they encompass, hold great capacity for addressing our society’s
challenges. Sophia Smith wished the college that she founded to serve as a perennial
blessing to the world. This is more than a dusty, historical precept; it is a vibrant
and living mission and one that I strongly endorse. |
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