Fall 1998 // Volume 13, Number 1 // Northampton, Massachusetts
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New ventures, new faces and NewsSmith in the news Thanks to a new joint venture between Smith and Dartmouth colleges, Smith women can soon start earning engineering degrees. A $620,000 gift from Dorothy Jean "D.J." MacLean '26 will provide five Smith students a year with the funds to study engineering at Dartmouth. Each student in the MacLean Program will spend her junior year taking pre-engineering courses at Dartmouth and her senior year back at Smith, from which she will graduate with a degree in a major other than engineering. She will then spend a fifth year at Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering, the nation's oldest professional school of engineering, earning a professional accredited bachelor of engineering degree. ........................................................
In August President Ruth J. Simmons was invited to join First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and prominent women academics for a discussion at the White House on the history and significance of the women's rights movement. Also this summer, Simmons addressed a formal assembly of the Massachusetts House of Representatives as a lecturer at the invitation of House Speaker Thomas Finneran. ........................................................
President Simmons called Connolly's new role a "historic change" in the administrative organization of the college. "John Connolly has a demonstrated record of leadership as a dean of the faculty and enjoys strong support both in the faculty and throughout the campus," she said. "I am persuaded that he is the right person to establish the position of provost at Smith and to continue the work that has begun without losing momentum." ........................................................ NewsSmith captured an award in the 1998 publications competition held by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE): the silver medal for all-around excellence in an "external audience newsletter." The medal was one of three presented in that category. Based in Washington, D.C., CASE is an international association of professionals and institutional representatives working in academic fund-raising, public outreach and alumni relations. ........................................................
Five new trustees have also joined the board. Jane Chace Carroll '53 has for many years been associated with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where she is currently a volunteer in the education department, a member of the executive committee of volunteers and a member of the visiting committee for 20th-century art. She is also a member of the Smith College Museum of Art Visiting Committee and a trustee of Hancock Shaker Village and Rhode Island School of Design and has been involved in a number of volunteer activities for Smith. Carroll was elected to a five-year term on the board. Judy Jae-Hee Kim '98, president of the Smith Student Government Association during her senior year, is presently a business analyst at Mitchell Madison Group in New York City. She will serve a two-year term on the board. Mary Patterson McPherson '57, LLD '81, is vice president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and was president of Bryn Mawr College from 1978 to 1997. She earned her M.A. from the University of Delaware and her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr. She serves on a number of boards and is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was elected to a five-year term on the board. Christian Schley '70 is managing director of the Houston office of Co-Counsel, a national firm providing legal, paralegal and litigation support. She earned her law degree at Emory University School of Law. As the incoming president of the Alumnae Association of Smith, she will serve as trustee ex officio for a three-year term. Winifred Markus Webb '80 is vice president of Investor Relations and Shareholder Services for The Walt Disney Company, Burbank, California. Before joining Disney she earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and worked in New York and London at PaineWebber Group and Lehman Brothers and for the Massachusetts-based CML Group. Webb was elected to serve as an alumnae trustee for a five-year term. ........................................................ Last spring the Women's Studies Program at Smith received a grant to start a new interdisciplinary journal. Tentatively called "Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism," it will provide a forum for the finest scholarship and creative work by and about women of color in both international and U.S. contexts. The journal's founding editorial board includes activist and scholar Angela Davis of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and novelist and Pulitzer Prize-winner Toni Morrison. Meridians will be the first journal specifically devoted to publishing research on women of color, according to Susan Van Dyne, chair of the Women's Studies Program. Jointly sponsored by the Smith program and Wesleyan University, it will be published twice a year by Wesleyan University Press. An inaugural issue is planned for the spring of 2000. ........................................................
Laquer brings to the job "an ideal combination of academic and administrative experience," says Dean of the College Maureen Mahoney. "She has worked in academic advising at women's colleges and has extensive experience teaching women's studies. An alumna of Bryn Mawr College, she has a personal perspective on women's education." At Smith she oversees all aspects of academic and nonacademic life for the program's participants, including recruitment, admission and advising. ........................................................ Lester K. Little, Dwight W. Morrow Professor of History at Smith College, this August began a prestigious three-year appointment as director of the American Academy in Rome. Founded in 1894, the academy is a renowned American institute for independent study and research in the fine arts and humanities. A member of the Smith faculty since 1971, Little chaired the Department of History from 1986 to 1989 and directed the college's Junior Year Abroad program in Florence in 1977-78 and from 1989 to 1991. He was written widely on European history. Academy President Adele Chatfield-Taylor said of Little, "[He] brings to us an extraordinary depth of experience and scholarship combined with a great understanding of Italy that makes him the perfect director for the academy." Little is the academy's 19th director. ........................................................ Humane Managed Care?, the newly released book edited by Dean of the Smith College School for Social Work Anita Lightburn and Smith Professor Gerald Schamess, brings together research, case studies, and scholarly articles by 62 of the country's leading human services experts. Described as a state-of-the-art sourcebook on the current policies, controversies, clinical knowledge, case studies and research strategies on managed care practices, it includes such articles as "Privatization and Mental Health in Massachusetts," "Managed Care, Mental Illness, and African Americans" and "Corporate Values and Managed Health Care: Who Benefits?" Copies of the book are available from NASW (National Association of Social Workers) Press, (800) 638-8799. ........................................................ The Norma Marin Collection of more than 170 modern American works of art will be shared by Smith and two other leading American women's colleges, Mount Holyoke and Wellesley. The collection will come to the three colleges as a bequest from Norma Marin, daughter-in-law of the distinguished American artist John Marin (1870-1953). It includes prints, photographs, drawings, paintings and sculptures by such noted figures as Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Morris Graves, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Katherine Porter. Norma Marin, who was born in 1930, retains title to the works during her lifetime but has already placed a number of works from the collection, including over 100 photographs, on extended loan to the three colleges. She also has established the Norma Marin Foundation for the Arts Inc., to be administered by a board that includes the directors of the three colleges' art museums. The foundation will administer a center for women working in the arts at Cape Split Place in Addison, Maine, in what had been the Marin family's summer retreat. |
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NewsSmith is published
by the Smith College Office of College Relations for alumnae, staff, students
and friends.
Copyright © 1998, 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: 9/23/98.
Made with Macintosh
John Connolly, a familiar presence
on campus as a scholar and a dean, took on a new role this July as the first
provost in Smith's history. As such he will serve as chief academic officer
and President Ruth Simmons' representative in various settings. He will
also supervise the implementation of many initiatives that emerged from
Smith's recent self-study. Connolly has been dean of the faculty at Smith
since 1994 and will continue in that role, having been named provost/dean
of the faculty for a three-year term.
As of July 1, 1998, Rochelle Braff Lazarus
'68 assumed the chair of the Smith College Board of Trustees. A board member
since 1995, she succeeds Kate Belcher Webster '46, who completed her term
on June 30.
Erika J. Laquer is the new director of the
Ada Comstock Scholars Program. She is the founding director of Merrimack
Educational Services, a consulting company in equity and diversity issues
for schools and health care facilities, and an adjunct professor of women's
studies at Merrimack College. Since receiving her doctorate in history from
the University of Pennsylvania Laquer has completed many presentations and
writings on women, education and history, including "Images of Adolescent
Girls and Self-Esteem" and "The Female World of Birth and Children."