Smith College: Ford Hall


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FACTS

To accommodate Smith College’s pioneering engineering program, and to update and relieve crowding in existing science buildings, the college is building science and engineering facilities in the area of Green Street, Belmont Avenue and West Street.

Construction on Ford Hall, a 140,000-square-foot science and engineering building at the corner of Green Street and Belmont Avenue, began in 2007. The building will open for classes for the Spring, 2010 semester.

Science and Engineering at Smith

Smith is the first women’s college in the country to offer engineering.


	Smith’s engineering program has grown from an entering class of 20 in 2000 to some 100 majors and intended majors in 2008. 118 students have graduated from the program.

	Thirty percent of Smith students major in the sciences.

	Smith is one of the top colleges sending women to doctoral studies in the sciences.

	Smith alumnae include the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the first woman computer scientist at IBM and the first woman on the faculty of Johns Hopkins Medical School.

Smith’s Campus Expansion

Smith is a residential college where students live on campus and walk to classes.


	Smith has less space per student than many of its peers. Amherst: 1,000 acres for 1,600 students Hampshire: 800 acres for 1,300 students Mount Holyoke: 800 acres for 2,100 students Smith: 147 acres for 2,600 students

	Most of Smith’s existing science facilities were built in the 1960s, and Smith has insufficient space for its growing science programs.

	A key factor in Smith’s ability to attract and retain world-class faculty and researchers in the sciences, and the funded research projects that accompany them, is the extent and capacity of the college’s science facilities.

	Because Smith is a liberal arts college, the sciences are taught alongside and in concert with the humanities and social sciences. It would not be workable to locate one discipline on a separate campus, as is sometimes the case at a research university.

	As at peer institutions such as Mount Holyoke and Amherst, Smith expansions have always taken place within the current campus footprint or in very close proximity to the core campus.