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SMITH IN THE NEWS VEWER ALERT: SMITH TO BE LIVE ON C-SPAN On Sunday, June 23, from 3 to 5 p.m. ET, Smith College will be the site of a live broadcast about the life and times of Betty Friedan and the impact of "The Feminine Mystique.". Among the primary guests will be Dan Horowitz, professor of American Studies, and Sherrill Redmon, head of the Sophia Smith Collection. The program is part of C-SPAN's noted American Writers series. The program will air again at 8 p.m. ET on Friday, June 28. SMITH'S 'MOST SENIOR' GRADUATING SENIOR " I always loved Smith and I loved
learning. School was always a refuge for me " "I always wanted to finish college.
I don't like unfinished business." "Age doesn't really matter. It's
your personality and your determination that count, more than
anything else." "I love research. I love writing
papers. I don't love exams, because as you get older, your mind
still works but it does not work as fast, and writing exams is
more difficult. But I made dean's list in my freshman year, and
I made it again now." "The young women at Princeton
were very, very bright, but they didn't speak up. At Smith, we
all spoke up." "What [Anne Martindell] did for
us was to bring to the classroom the wealth of knowledge and
experience she had gathered during her extraordinary life. How
many 20-year-olds have an opportunity to meet a woman like her?" "It's very, very difficult to
do it all [education, work and family] at once. We live so much
longer now that we can wait." "During her freshman year at Smith
College, Anne Martindell goofed off and studied for exams at
the last minute. But by her junior year, she couldn't get enough
of her textbooks. CELEBRATING COMMENCEMENT "The most important thing you
can get from a good liberal education is a chance to learn from
your failures, not just your successes." "You have much to be proud of
today, your credentials, your connections, the many chances you've
been given to succeed. You must lead, not just succeed." "I just kept plugging. I kept
that long-range goal." SMITH CITED FOR ENROLLING ECONOMIC DIVERSITY "At the same time, many prestigious
institutions that don't pledge to cover full financial need actually
do much better in enrolling the poor. At Smith College, Mount
Holyoke College, the University of Southern California and the
University of California campuses, a fourth or more of the students
receive federal Pell grants, which are limited to students whose
family income is roughly in the lower third nationally." A SNEAK PEEK AT THE NEW FINE ARTS CENTER "The question was where we could
add and subtract to make it all work functionally. How do you
break it down in scale and make it connect to the historical
setting, with materials that are more fitting?" "We're a campus museum, and that's
our constituency. But we're very much a public museum, too." CONTINUED RECOGNITION FOR ENGINEERING "Two years ago, the college began
offering an engineering program, which makes Smith the first
women's college to offer such a program." "So, yes, I support the idea of
an engineering school for women. Smith College has a new engineering
school. It essentially got together with young graduates to create
a new educational experience." LEAVING SMITH WITH FINANCIAL TOOLS AND REAL-WORLD SKILLS "My concern is starting to set
up everything. I want to have a secure financial future. I learned
so much today." "[College students] often don't
understand how important it is to start thinking of retirement
funds at this end of life." "Often when students take out
these loans, they aren't focused on how they are going to pay
them back. But now that they are seniors, they are very interested.
It's when they are about to graduate that they begin to panic." "In a nod to the global economy,
Smith College in Northampton offers workshops such as Going to
Work in Strange Places, to help seniors (and juniors) gain cultural
awareness. In one exercise, students assigned to clashing cultures
(one open and aggressive, the other one more reserved) must try
to establish rapport." SMITH RESPONDS TO HATE INCIDENTS I want everybody to know that we take
these events seriously and will respond vigorously. We regard
these threats as entirely unacceptable." "I see this (meeting) as a vehicle
to avoid future incidents." ADMISSION ISSUES MAKE NEWS "We're hoping some of the people
we accepted will take a year off. We'll be tight for bed space." "It's another year of maturity.
Often the students [who take time off between high school and
college] are exposed to a completely new experience, a new culture
a new group pf people, new responsibilities. It gives them confidence,
a set of skills, maturity and appreciation for academic work." STUDENTS STAND OUT "Sophomore Yakhara Sembene never
thought of herself as a natural leader, but she said, 'People
have been telling me that I am.'" "We've had people join the club
who can't float very well. Synchro isn't very hard, once you
learn the basics." FACULTY VOICES IN THE NEWS "After five or seven years in
teaching, most teachers have a moment of existential terror:
Will I be able to sustain this kind of effort over a career?
They need to return to the original source of their calling,
which was to make a seismic difference in the lives of their
students." "When you look at South Asia,
where most women live lives in which they are not put in positions
of decsion-making or leadership, where almost half of the population
are women, they are not given the opportunity to contribute in
the way they could." "It seemed like the vibe at the
conference was that people could be funny and still make a point." "We won't have music at the college
level unless we reach out to children and expose them to music
at a young age." |
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