Welcome to a New Year at Smith

Dear Friends,

Whether you were on campus over the summer, you are returning to Smith after what I hope has been a restorative break, or you are joining us for the first time—I am so glad you’re here! As new connections are made and friends, co-workers, and colleagues reunite, new friendships and never before considered ideas await us.

I’m especially pleased to welcome the incoming class of 2030—648 students strong, drawn from 45 states and 37 countries, with 17% the first in their families to attend college. You can explore the full class profile on our Meet the Class of 2030 page. I’m also glad to welcome those of you who are new to the faculty and staff. Indeed, I have two new members of my team—Heather McDonald, vice president for advancement, and ej seibert, interim vice president for equity and inclusion. And so I invite all of you to come meet old friends and new over doughnuts and coffee on September 8 in the Campus Center from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. for our inaugural First Tuesdays event (which is the second Tuesday only this month before we return to the usual pattern on October 6).

For those of you just joining the Smith community, we are now engaged in the collective work of advancing our mission-driven strategic plan, Compass 2035. I’m grateful to everyone who is contributing to this effort, and I’ll be using our new-and-improved monthly Notes From Paradise e-newsletter to share more about our work.

A fundamental aspect of Compass 2035 is sustainability, so I’m pleased to report that the geothermal project continues on schedule, keeping Smith among the top tier of institutions taking bold, visible climate action. This summer, 22 additional central campus buildings were converted to geothermal, bringing the total number of buildings running on the new system to 39—nearly a third of our campus square footage. Under the sustainability umbrella, this summer we also launched the first digital edition of the Smith Quarterly, giving readers the option to save paper and receive the digital version only, which we expect more and more people will choose over time.

In terms of other new technologies, I know AI is on the minds of many people. I’ve chosen, therefore, to make it the topic of the 2026–27 presidential colloquium series, titled “AI, Integrity, and the Collective Good.” We are required by our values to approach AI with critical, ethical, and creative lenses as we consider its implications on pedagogy, the career readiness of our students, the functioning of the college, the environment, and changes to the job market. Understanding our responsibilities when the regulatory guardrails have not yet caught up to the technology is one of our collective charges. To this end, the series will feature two remarkable Smith alums: Amanda Ballantyne ’02, Senior Fellow for Workers and Technology at New America and a visiting scholar at the MIT Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work; and Yacine Fall ’21, founder of HYVE—a platform designed to use AI to gather data from historically underrepresented communities in order to close long-standing gaps in public health data. Presidential colloquia are designed to foster a campus environment that welcomes open, respectful, and courageous inquiry. I hope you’ll join both conversations.

Finally, several of you have asked me where things stand with regard to the federal government’s May 2026 Title IX inquiry into Smith’s admissions policies. We have responded to the inquiry and remain firmly committed to upholding the law and the college’s policies. I know that this experience is unsettling, and I’m deeply grateful to everyone across our community and beyond who stands with Smith, especially at this moment. As always, I will keep you informed when there is more to share. My commitment to executing Smith’s mission alongside you remains unwavering.

I wish you a wonderful start to this new academic year, and I look forward to seeing you on September 8, if not before.

Sarah Willie-LeBreton
President