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 Smith
College opened in the fall of 1875 with 14 students and six faculty under the presidency
of Laurenus Clark Seelye. Its small campus was planned to make the college part of
what John M. Greene called "the real practical life" of a New England town,
rather than a sequestered academic preserve. College Hall, the Victorian Gothic administrative
and classroom building, dominated the head of Northampton's Main Street. For study
and worship, students used the town's well-endowed public library and various churches.
Instead of a dormitory, students lived in a "cottage," where life was more
familial than institutional. Thus began the "house" system that, with some
modifications, the college still employs today. The main lines of Smith's founding
educational policy, laid down in President Seelye's inaugural address, remain valid
today: then as now, the standards for admission were as high as those of the best
colleges for men; then as now, a truly liberal education was fostered by a broad
curriculum of the humanities, the fine arts and the natural and social sciences.
During the 35 years of President Seelye's administration,
the college prospered mightily. Its assets grew from Sophia Smith's original bequest
of about $400,000 to more than $3,000,000; its faculty to 122; its student body to
1,635; its buildings to 35. These buildings included Alumnae Gymnasium, site of the
first women's basketball game, which now houses the College Archives and is connected
to the William Allan Neilson Library, one of the best-stocked undergraduate libraries
in the country.
 Smith's
second president, Marion LeRoy Burton, took office in 1910. President Burton, a graduate
of Yale Divinity School, was a gifted public speaker with an especially acute business
sense. He used these talents to help the college raise the amazing sum of $1,000,000--a
huge endowment campaign for any college at that time. With the college's increased
endowment, President Burton was able to increase faculty salaries substantially and
improve the faculty-to-student ratio. President Burton's fund drive also invigorated
the alumnae, bringing them closer to the college than ever before and increasing
their representation on the board of trustees.
Along with improving the financial state and business
methods of the college, President Burton also contributed to a revision of the curriculum
and initiated college honors programs to recognize outstanding students. He also
helped to organize a cooperative admission system among Smith, Mount Holyoke, Wellesley
and Vassar, the finest women's colleges of the day. President Burton's accomplishments
are commemorated today by Burton Hall, the science building that his fund drive helped
to finance.
 When
William Allan Neilson became president in 1917, Smith was already one of the largest
women's colleges in the world. President Neilson shrewdly developed the advantages
of large academic institutions while maintaining the benefits of a small one. Under
his leadership, the size of the faculty continued to increase while the number of
students remained at about 2,000. The curriculum was revised to provide a pattern
still followed in many American colleges--a broad foundation in various fields of
knowledge, later complemented by the more intensive study of a major subject. The
college expanded honors programs and initiated interdepartmental majors in science,
landscape architecture and theatre. The School for Social Work, a coeducational graduate
program, was founded. And more college houses were built, mainly in the Georgian
complex called "the Quad," so that every student could live on campus.
Not only did President Neilson help make Smith College one of the leading colleges
in the United States, whether for men or women, but he also developed it into an
institution of international distinction and concerns. President Neilson, himself
a Scotsman, married to a well-educated German woman, transformed the college from
a high-minded but provincial community in the hinterland of Massachusetts into a
cosmopolitan center constantly animated by ideas from abroad. Between the two world
wars, he brought many important exiled or endangered foreign teachers, scholars,
lecturers and artists to the college. Meanwhile, as long as peace lasted, Smith students
went to study in France, Italy and Spain on the Junior Year Abroad Program instituted
by the college in 1924.
 President
Neilson retired in 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, and for one year
Elizabeth Cutter Morrow, an alumna trustee, served as acting president. Herbert Davis
took office as Smith's fourth president in 1940 and reaffirmed the contributions
that a liberal arts college could make to a troubled world. Already during World
War I a group of Smith alumnae had gone to France to do relief work in the town of
Grécourt; a replica of Grécourt's chateau gates is now emblematic of
the college.
Soon after the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, the college
agreed to provide facilities on its campus for the first Officers' Training Unit
of the Women's Reserve, or WAVES. The college added a summer term from 1942 to 1945
so some students could graduate more quickly and go on to government, hospital or
military service. Though physically isolated by travel restrictions, the college
retained its cosmopolitan character as refugees came to lecture, teach and study.
And foreign films were shown regularly in Sage Hall--a practice that would give generations
of students their sensitivity both to other cultures and to an important new art.
President Davis' administration was marked by intensified academic life, reflecting
his belief that serious study was a way of confronting the global threat to civilization.
 Benjamin
Fletcher Wright came from Harvard to become Smith's fifth president in 1949. The
college had by then resumed its regular calendar and completed several much-needed
building projects, including a new heating plant and a student recreation center
named for retiring President Davis. The most memorable achievements of President
Wright's administration were the strengthening of Smith's financial position and
the defense of academic freedom during the 1950s.
In 1950, the $7 Million Fund Drive was triumphantly
completed, enabling the college to improve facilities and increase faculty salaries.
In 1955, the Helen Hills Hills Chapel was completed, giving Smith its own place of
worship. The early 1950s were not, though, easy years for colleges; McCarthyism bred
a widespread suspicion of any writing or teaching that might seem left of center.
In defending his faculty members' right to political and intellectual independence,
President Wright showed great courage and statesmanship. Complementing his achievements
was the financial and moral support of Smith's Alumnae Association, by now the most
devoted and active group of its kind in the country. Before President Wright's term
ended, the college received a large gift for constructing a new faculty office and
classroombuilding to be named for him.
 When
Thomas Corwin Mendenhall came from Yale in 1959 to become Smith's sixth president,
both the college and the country at large were enjoying peace and prosperity. During
the 1960s, social and cultural changes stirred the college profoundly, and a series
of powerful movements influenced the larger society and the academic world alike.
In response to the needs of increasingly independent and ambitious students, the
curriculum was thoroughly revised. College-wide requirements were set aside and independent
study encouraged. The college made more varied educational experiences available
to Smith undergraduates by extending cooperation with its neighbors--Amherst, Hampshire
and Mount Holyoke colleges and the University of Massachusetts. And Smith joined
other private colleges in the Northeast to develop the Twelve College Exchange Program.
The college added buildings with the most modern facilities for the study of the
natural sciences, performing arts and fine arts. The new fine arts center included
the Smith College Museum of Art, now one of the most distinguished college museums
in the country.
The 1960s saw the civil rights movement, the students'
rights movement and the anti-war movement take root and grow at many of the country's
universities and colleges, including Smith. Thanks to these movements and to the
wisdom, tact and humor of President Mendenhall, the college emerged from the 1960s
with a more precise awareness of student needs and an active, practical sense of
social responsibility.
Meanwhile, life in the college houses was changing.
The old rules governing late evenings out and male visitors were relaxed, then abandoned.
Not surprisingly, when Vassar began to accept men, and Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth
to accept women as candidates for degrees, some members of the college community
wondered whether Smith should also become coeducational. In 1971, a committee of
trustees, faculty, administration, students and alumnae studied the question in detail.
The committee concluded that admitting men as candidates for the Smith degree would
detract from the founding purpose of the college, the best possible education for
women.
 In
the late 1960s and early 1970s another important movement--the women's movement--was
gathering momentum. This was to have a profound effect on American society and to
confirm the original purpose of Smith College. The college began its second century
in 1975 by inaugurating its first woman president, Jill Ker Conway, who came to Smith
from Australia by way of Harvard and the University of Toronto. She was a charismatic
and energetic leader with a vision for women's education, and her administration
was marked by three major accomplishments: a large-scale renovation and expansion
of Neilson Library, evidence of Smith's undiminished concern for the heart of the
liberal arts; the rapid growth of the Ada Comstock Scholars Program, through which
women beyond the traditional college age could earn a Smith degree; and exceptionally
successful fund-raising efforts. Also during President Conway's administration, the
Career Development Office was expanded to better counsel Smith students and alumnae
about career opportunities and graduate training for women. Recognizing the rapidly
growing emphasis on fitness and athletics for women, Smith built the Ainsworth Gymnasium
and broke ground for new indoor and outdoor track and tennis facilities. President
Conway's contributions underscored her commitment to women's colleges and a liberal
arts education in today's society. Since leaving Smith, Conway has written an acclaimed
series of memoirs; her most recent book, A Woman's Education, concerns her
Smith years.
 The
college that President Conway left to her successor was in some ways very different
from the college served by Presidents Seelye, Burton and Neilson. When Mary Maples
Dunn came to Smith in 1985 after many years as a professor of history and then as
dean of Bryn Mawr College, Smith's student body had diversified. During its early
decades the student body had been overwhelmingly Protestant, but by the 1970s, Roman
Catholic and Jewish college chaplains served alongside the Protestant chaplain, reflecting
the students' religious and ethnic variety. All racial, ethnic and religious groups
are now well represented on campus, evidence of Smith's continuing moral and intellectual
commitment to diversity.
In her decade as president, Mary Maples Dunn led the
college through exciting and challenging times. During her tenure, the college raised
more than $300 million, constructed two major buildings and renovated many more,
enhanced communication on and off campus, attracted record numbers of applicants
(while holding the quality of those applicants steady) and doubled the value of its
endowment. Computer technology transformed the way Smith conducted its business.
And the curriculum became broader in scope, with five new majors and increased course
offerings in non-Western and neglected American cultures.
 In
December 1994 Ruth Simmons was chosen as Smith's ninth president. With a long and
distinguished career in higher education behind her, Simmons was the first African-American
woman to head any top-ranked American college or university. Simmons galvanized the
campus through an ambitious campus-wide self-study process that resulted in a number
of landmark initiatives, including Praxis, a program that allows every Smith student
the opportunity to elect an internship funded by the college; an engineering program,
the first at a women's college; programs in the humanities that include the establishment
of a poetry center and a peer-reviewed journal devoted to publishing scholarly works
by and about women of color; and curricular innovations that include intensive seminars
for first-year students and programs to encourage students' speaking and writing
skills.
A number of building projects were launched during Simmons'
administration; most significant was the Brown Fine Arts Center, a $35-million expansion
and renovation of the Smith College Museum of Art, art department and art library.
Ground was broken in 2002 for a campus center, and renovation and expansion of the
Lyman Conservatory was completed in 2003.
Simmons left Smith in June 2001, assuming the presidency
of Brown University. John M. Connolly, Smith's first provost, served as acting president
for one year, skillfully guiding the college through the trauma of September 11,
2001, and its aftermath.
 A
widely respected scholar of Victorian literature, Carol T. Christ took up her duties
as Smith�s 10th president in June 2002. In her first three years at Smith, Christ
launched an energetic program of outreach, innovation and long-range planning, including
capital planning. She encouraged the development of coursework emphasizing fluency
in American cultures and the diversity of experience of American ethnic groups and
launched a review, conducted by members of the Smith faculty and outside scholars,
to determine the distinctive intellectual traditions of the Smith curriculum and
areas on which to build. She shaped dialogue and programs to address constraints
on Smith�s budget caused by the nation�s economic situation, a process that culminated
in a comprehensive plan to avoid deficits and bring the college�s budget into equilibrium,
ensuring continued excellence, access and affordability as well as funding for new
initiatives. Major building projects have come to fruition: the renovation of and
addition to the Brown Fine Arts Center, a dramatic new Campus Center, a renovated
Lyman Conservatory, the impressive Olin Fitness Center, new homes for the Poetry
Center and Mwangi Cultural Center, and the renovation of Lilly Hall, home of the
college�s School for Social Work. Christ has now spurred planning for a comprehensive
new science center and, for the shorter term, a state-of-the-art, sustainably designed
classroom and laboratory facility for the college�s pioneering Picker Engineering
Program and the sciences.
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Mission
of Smith
College
Sophia
Smith: Smith College's Founder
Smith
College
Presidents
Honorary
Degrees
Smith
College
Medalists
John
M. Greene
Awards
Sophia
Smith
Awards
Commencement
Speakers
Some
Special
Traditions
Notable
Alumnae |
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