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Fall 2001 // Volume 16, Number 1 // Northampton, Massachusetts
Cape Fox Artifacts Home at Last Did You Remember Your Ear Muffs? C-Span to Look at Life of Betty Friedan Smith Closes Financial Information Gap Art on the Road, on the Fence and on the Lawn |
Smith College Studies in Social Work,
one of the oldest and most respected journals in social work
practice, addressed an issue of pressing national concern-school
violence-in its March 2001 issue. The special issue featured
papers from a June 2000 Smith School for Social Worksponsored
conference titled "Safe Schools: Building Fortresses or
Opening the Doors to Community?" The multidisci-plinary
conference brought together leading experts from education, social
work, public health, psychiatry and law to attempt to forge antiviolence
initiatives around the premise that schools and the communities
they serve are inextricably linked. Limited copies of the school
violence special issue (Vol. 71, Number 2) are available for
$16. Contact Judith Soule (jsoule@smith.edu, 413/585-7974) to
order. There was good news in May for Smith's
$23 million campus center. Northampton's Elm Street Historic
District Committee, the city group charged with overseeing new
construction in the historic area, approved design details following
a meeting with project architects, college officials and former
President Ruth Simmons. The proposed 58,000-square-foot campus
center, to be built on Elm Street next door to John M. Greene
Hall, had drawn fire from students and town officials because
of its contemporary architectural features. Subsequent revisions
to the building's design have made it more acceptable to students
and town residents who had wanted the structure to be more in
keeping with the architecture of the surrounding buildings and
neighborhoods. Having achieved their $250 million
goal in May, far earlier than anticipated, fund-raising leaders
and volunteers at Smith decided to use the momentum generated
by the capital campaign's first phase to address additional priorities
by reaching for a higher goal. Ruth Simmons, former president
of the college, announced that Smith would set a new fund-raising
goal of $425 million. Fostering excellence in the academic program
will remain the campaign's core goal. This second phase of the
campaign will conclude on December 21, 2004. Secondary school and college faculty
spent time on campus this July as participants in an intensive
working conference on engineering education. The goal of the
conference, titled "synergy" (lowercase s), was to
generate new strategies for such concepts as designing engineering
curricula and merging engineering and the liberal arts. Experts
from a variety of fields gave presentations, and Smith engineering
faculty acted as session leaders. A grant from the Ford Motor
Company to the Smith Picker Engineering Program supported "synergy"
in part, along with the National Consortium for Specialized Schools
of Mathematics, Science and Technology. This year's incoming class of 2005
will have the largest number of international students in recent
years. The class, with a total of 672 first-year students, includes
some 60 international students and 146 women of color, representing
respectively 9 percent and 20 percent of its members. Four new
engineering majors will enter Smith as Ford Scholars, with full-tuition
scholarships for four years of study and laptop computers, funded
by the Ford Motor Company. Smith's very first Interactive Networked Classroom (INC) debuted on campus in May. The new high-tech facility connects electronically with similar installations at Amherst, Hampshire and Mount Holyoke colleges, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which together with Smith make up the Five College Consortium, the leader and coordinator for the project. Each INC facility is fully equipped for real-time interactive exchange of voice, video and data and can connect to three other classrooms at a time. The networked classrooms allow Smith faculty to explore many different teaching models, including adding guest lectures by off-campus speakers and team-teaching a course with a colleague at another campus. |
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NewsSmith
is published by the Smith College Office of College Relations
for alumnae, staff, students and friends.
Copyright © 2001, Smith College. Portions of this publication
may be reproduced with the permission of the Office
of College Relations, Garrison Hall, Smith College, Northampton,
Massachusetts 01063. Last update: 9/9/2001.
Made
with Macintosh
In
May, Smith College received preservation awards from the Northampton
Historical Commission for the refurbishing and "exquisite
preservation" of three of its student residences -- Hopkins,
Wesley and Tenney houses. In 2000, all three houses were entirely
renovated, and Wesley House was moved to a new location in preparation
for the construction of the campus center, which will begin in
2002. The projects included new mechanical systems, roofs and
bathrooms in all three houses as well as fresh exterior paint
in new color combinations. Stained glass windows and porch columns
salvaged from Hopkins A and B were incorporated in the Hopkins
House renovation and a new "co-op" kitchen environment
was created. In a letter to the Historical Commission, former
President Ruth Simmons said: "These awards reflect the deep
care and careful deliberations of many at the college who oversee
the design and work on renovation and construction projects."