According to Quentin Quesnell, our resident expert on Sophia and Sophia Smith, the Smith College seal shown here is a 1935 official modification of the original College seal (graphically edited by Jessie Rauch, original designer of this site). President Neilson for a time looked into the possibility of an entirely new seal for the College, settled finally for this slight modernizing variation. It omits the sun's rays behind the woman; it uses a simpler, cleaner 30's style typeface for the English and the Greek both; it omits a couple of decorative stars on the text-banner, as well as one of the encircling bands; etc. This 1935 adaptation is still the official seal, though many unofficial variants abound. To read more about this image and its changes through history click on the picture above to go to the full text of Professor Quesnell's Engel lecture, "In Search of Sophia."