Fall 1997 | Volume 11, Number 2 | Northampton, Massachusetts
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Science Education at Smith Under the Microscope Smith College: Renovated, Renewed and Rewired Historic Human Chain for Change Smith makes headlines, bylines and features Smithellanea: Not Just Another "ER" Fan |
Sophia Smith, Women in Sport and School for Social WorkTwo renowned academics shared the stage in John M. Greene Hall in September as part of the college's symposium weekend celebrating the bicentennial birthday of its founder, Sophia Smith. Jill Ker Conway, former Smith president, and Johnnetta Cole, president of Spelman College, each stressed that the role of women's colleges remains vital even as the world around them changes. President Ruth Simmons moderated the event. Conway spoke of how Smithies have been perceived since the school was founded. Over the years, she said, Smith women have had to overcome stereotypes characterizing them as everything from being ill-suited for education to being radical feminists and lesbians. Cole pointed out that Spelman and Smith share the same legacy of having been ahead of their time in offering a college education to women during the 19th century. She said that "Sophia Smith was no less bodacious" than Sophia Packard and Harriet Giles--two white women from the Northeast who in 1881 founded Spelman, one of the nation's historically black colleges.
The Smith community gathered in September to celebrate the bicentennial birthday of the college's founder, Sophia Smith. The weekend's festivities included a bicycle pilgrimage to Sophia's grave site in Hatfield, a regatta on Paradise Pond, a concert in Sage Hall, and birthday cake for all-here served by President Ruth Simmons............................. Speaking of former Smith president Jill Ker Conway, she was on a 15-city tour last fall pitching her latest book, Written by Herself: Volume II: Women's Memoirs from Britain, Africa, Asia, and the United States. This second anthology of women's autobiographical writings represents Conway's continuing fascination with the stories women have to tell about their societies. The volume is a follow-up to one on American women, beginning with Harriet Ann Jacobs' slave narrative and ending with feminist author Gloria Steinem's memoirs. Conway, who served as Smith's first woman president, from 1975 to1985, recounted her own passions, struggles and adventures in The Road from Coorain and True North. Since 1985 she has been a visiting scholar and professor in MIT's Program in Science, Technology and Society. ............................ Novelist Toni Morrison, the first African-American recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature, was at Smith in October to discuss the writing life. An overflow audience of 2,500 filled John M. Greene Hall to hear her read a lengthy excerpt from Paradise, a work-in-progress. Her appearance came on the heels of President Ruth Simmons' recommendation that students read the author's first novel, Bluest Eye, over the summer. Discussion groups were held about the book in September. The Campus Climate Working Group, an ad-hoc committee of students, staff and faculty interested in fostering respect for diversity at the college, sponsored the talk. Morrison, who is the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved in 1988 and the National Book Critics Award for Song of Solomon in 1977. ............................ In November, Nike and Smith College launched a two-year partnership to build self-esteem in girls and women through sports. "We hope that it will encourage girls to stay in sports and not drop out," said Marilyn Bradley, director of the Power of Play Program. About 650 girls in the fifth through eighth grades are expected to be the main beneficiaries of the program, which includes special sport clinics in competitive athletics, coaches conferences, and research on the impact of sport on girls' lives. "We're targeting this age group because statistics show that many girls drop out of sports when they go to high school," Bradley said. The program is underwritten with a $50,000 grant from Nike, Inc., with additional funding from Smith. ............................ Christine Shelton, associate professor of exercise and sport studies at Smith, was one of the representatives carrying the torch for the United States at the first World Conference on Women and Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland this October. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) sponsored the four-day conference, which had 220 participants from 96 countries, as part of its affirmative action effort, Shelton said. "It was encouraging to see so many women participating," she said. Men were overly represented at past international gatherings of sport and Olympic officials because sport ministries in many countries are staffed by males. The IOC is urging national Olympic committees and international federations to ensure that by the year 2000, 10 percent of their decision-making officials are women and by 2005 that number climbs to 20 percent. Shelton indicated that Smith's exercise and sport studies program will ride this trend because it's oriented toward educating female coaches and sport officials. "I feel that we're really on the cutting edge with that," she said. But according to Shelton, the IOC has a ways to go before it becomes the perfect arbiter in this and other matters affecting women in its ranks, such as sexual harassment and gender verification, which requires that female athletes prove they are "chromosomally" women before they may compete in the Olympics. She also pointed to the lack of Olympic status for netball, a sport played by women in more than 120 countries, as an example of how sexism infuses the IOC's decision-making process. "Compared with mountain biking, more people play it. And how many people around the world can own a mountain bike?" Shelton noted. ............................ A large contingent of Smith College School for Social Work students and faculty joined together last summer to protest welfare reforms. Josh Miller, assistant professor of social work, also organized a mock funeral procession that wound its way through downtown Northampton as part of the protest. In an interview that aired on local television news, Miller said the funeral procession was "symbolic of the death of the federal government's 61-year-old commitment to caring for children and their parents when they are unable to care for themselves." ............................ If you haven't visited Smith's Web site (www.smith.edu), you're missing one of the best. Smith is among only 15 colleges and universities to be included on PC Computing magazine's list of the best 1,001 Web sites of 1996. The magazine's editors and Internet experts "spent the past few months combing the Web to compile our annual list of the very best sites for business, home and recreation," the story explains. Other colleges and universities honored include MIT, Radcliffe College and Stanford University. ............................ In Memoriam: Virginia Corwin Brautigam, Charles N. Clark Professor Emeritus of Religion and Biblical Literature, died in August at the age of 95. Dr. Corwin, as she was known to her students and colleagues, was a member of the Smith faculty from 1930 until her retirement in 1966. She was a specialist in Indian and Eastern religions who traveled widely to study Hinduism and Buddhism. Her travels took her to Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Japan. Corwin received a doctorate in history in 1937 from Yale University, and in 1960 her dissertation, "St. Ignatius and Christianity in Antioch," was published by Yale Press. She was preceded in death by her husband, Herman Brautigam, a friend and colleague she had first met as a student at Yale and whom she married in 1975. Corwin left her personal collection of 516 books and a dozen artifacts pertaining to her interests in Eastern religions and faiths to Neilson Library. Her niece, Jean Corwin Wilson, has requested that memorial gifts be directed to the Virginia Brautigam Corwin Scholarship Fund, Smith College Advancement Office, Northampton, MA 01063. |
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