............................   Smith Receives Record Gifts   Vanity Fair List Studded With Smith Women   Scholars Gather to Discuss Queer Studies, Activism   Students Who Lead   Conference: Looking for 32 Good Students   No Writer's Block Here

Praxis Praised, Architects Chosen, and Hail to the Chief The Smith College Board of Trustees has selected architects for two major building projects--a new campus center and a renovation of and addition to the Fine Arts Center, the complex which houses the college's Museum of Art, art department and art library. (See related story.) James Stewart Polshek & Partners, a New York architectural firm, has been chosen for the Fine Arts Center project. Polshek designed the renovations to Smith's Sage Hall in the early 1990s and has since worked on major projects at the Brooklyn Museum, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York, the Pequot Museum and Research Center in Mashantucket, Connecticut, and the Center for the Arts Theater at Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco. The Fine Arts Center project is expected to add about 50,000 square feet to the 126,000-square-foot complex at an estimated cost of $31 million. Groundbreaking for the arts complex project is slated for the late spring of 2000. Another New York firm, Weiss/Manfredi, has been selected to design the campus center. Weiss/Manfredi's best-known project, completed in October 1997, is the Women's Memorial and Education Center at Arlington National Cemetery. Other recent work includes projects at Columbia University, the Sergeant Means Community Center in Olympia Fields, Illinois, and a suite of offices for the John A. Hartford Foundation in Manhattan. A site adjacent to John M. Greene Hall has been chosen for the campus center. Groundbreaking is scheduled for late 2000. ............................ Smith College President Ruth Simmons has been inducted as an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, the first Greek-letter organization in the U.S. for college-educated black women. The sorority was founded at Howard University in 1908 as a service organization. Honorary membership is the organization's highest honor and one which is shared by such other notables as Ella Fitzgerald, Mae Jemison, Coretta Scott King, Toni Morrison and Eleanor Roosevelt. Another award came Simmons' way in November: she was honored for her contributions to the cause of equal opportunity by the National Urban League in New York at the League's 42nd annual Equal Opportunity Day Dinner. Her fellow honorees were singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder and Anheuser Busch Executive Vice President John Jacob. ............................ By the year 2000 every Smith student will have access to funding for an internship during the summer after her junior year. That is the promise of the college's new Praxis program, which was launched in October with a generous boost from the executive Fortune magazine recently named the "fourth most powerful woman in American business." Shelly Lazarus '68, CEO of the advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather and chair of the Smith College Board of Trustees, told a campus audience of students, faculty, staff and alumnae that the program will be critical in giving students early practical workplace experience. "In my day," she noted, "we all thought the watershed experience we should get in college was a year abroad. I think an internship is the year abroad for 21st-century students." The Boston Sunday Globe also applauded the new program in its lead editorial on October 4. "Smith College has furthered the quest of elite colleges to serve students whose families do not have elite incomes," the Globe said. "A new program called Praxis will subsidize unpaid internships to make sure that all interested students can have the unique experiences that internships provide.... Praxis could become a model for helping all college students take advantage of all resources around them, from classes and extracurricular activities to alumni and special programs." ............................ A bequest from a local alumna has funded the creation of two new chaired professorships at Smith. Barbara Richmond's $2.8 million bequest, among the largest in the college's history, will make possible an endowed chair in the humanities and another in the social sciences. Richmond, who graduated in 1940, died in 1995. ............................ Karin L. George '86 is Smith College's new chief advancement officer, President Ruth Simmons announced in December. George, a Smith graduate, will come to her new post on March 1 after being responsible since 1991 for key development programs at Vassar College. George is the current vice president for development at Vassar, a post she assumed in 1995 with 16 months remaining in the college's $200 million capital campaign. Under her leadership, Vassar raised $67 million in the campaign's final months, pushing its total to $206.8 million. George, who was responsible for all aspects of Vassar's fund-raising, managed a staff of 53 and an annual budget of approximately $5 million. Prior to that she was director of Vassar's annual fund, a position she also had held at St. Lawrence University. She succeeds Nancy Harvin, director of leadership gifts, who has been serving as interim chief advancement officer. In announcing George's appointment, President Simmons noted: "I am confident that Karin George has the skills, experience and energy to serve Smith with distinction in the coming years. I know that you will join me in welcoming her back to Smith." ............................ The first-ever Ada Comstock Scholars Alumnae Art Exhibit will open February 5 in Smith's Alumnae House Gallery. The juried show, organized by a group of Ada Comstock alumnae with support from the Ada Comstock office, features works from 17 artists. Art professor Susan Heideman, art adviser and Smith trustee Janice Carlson Oresman '55 and art historian Charles Parkhurst served as judges for the show. The exhibit remains on display until March 26.

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