Speech to the Council of Social Agencies, September 16, 2005

The Hotel Northampton, September 16, 2005

The topic of my talk is the social mission of Smith College. But first I would like to step back and consider the remarkable ways in which colleges and universities in the United States developed in relationship to their communities. Smith has an interesting history in this regard, one result of which is an unusually rich array of opportunities for partnership between social agencies and the college.

The United States has the finest system of higher education in the world. I say this without hesitation. Its strength and value result in large part from the way in which it developed -- or I should say ways in which it developed. There are more than 2,000 private, nonprofit and public four-year colleges or universities in the United States today, each with its own history and governance. This extent and variety is not merely a curiosity; it is an enormous and widely recognized strength.

The first colleges in the United States were private. For the most part, they were church related and they were widely dispersed geographically. In this vast, growing new country, men wanted -- and I say men deliberately -- to educate clergy and teachers for a growing population expanding into rural territories. This is a very different pattern from the development of universities in Europe, which were most often founded in cities and supported with state resources. For example, Amherst College, across the river, was founded in 1821 by a group of local citizens to educate “indigent young men of piety and talents for the Christian ministry.” Thus the idea of social service was central to the missions of American colleges from the beginning.

In 1862, Congress passed a very important piece of legislation for higher education, the Morrill Act, which provided land for every state to establish a public university to serve the educational needs of a growing populace, providing particular emphasis on instruction in agriculture and engineering. These are the so-called land grant universities, and every state has one. Massachusetts’ land grant university is, of course, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, founded in 1867 on 310 acres, with four faculty members and 56 students. So you see, both the development of public universities and private colleges was tied closely to the social needs of a developing country. They were democratic in impulse, extending the benefits of education to the general population.

Let me now situate Smith College in this picture. Smith, as I am sure many of you know, was founded by a bequest from Sophia Smith. In 1861, at the age of 65, Sophia Smith unexpectedly inherited a large fortune. She was the only surviving child in a family of seven, and none of her siblings had children. She deliberated a long time before deciding what to do with her inheritance, talking extensively with her minister, John M. Greene. Thankfully for us, she decided ultimately to found a college for women. Her purpose was simple, yet profound; she felt that by the education of women, she could increase their “power for good,” their “weight of influence in reforming the evils of society.”

Now Sophia Smith was from Hatfield, but she decided that the new college should be in Northampton, because Northampton, in her words, was “the best place.” The citizens of Hatfield were so outraged by her choice that they sought to challenge the will, contending she was not of sound mind when she wrote it. After all, who could possibly prefer Northampton to Hatfield?

In Sophia Smith’s conversations with her minister, John Greene, and in John Greene’s subsequent conversations with the trustees of the new college, very specific and distinctive ideas were developed about the college’s relationship to the town. They did not want to build their new college on the model of Mount Holyoke, which had been founded in 1837. Mount Holyoke was a seminary, not a college, and secluded its students from the town. In contrast, Smith’s founders very much wanted the college to be part of the town, and they set up ways to make that happen. Smith students, they declared, should use the town library -- Forbes Library -- as their library; they should attend Northampton churches; and they should live in residences that looked like family houses, a decision in which we see the origin of Smith’s distinctive house system. Their purpose, in integrating the college so fully with the town, was to teach young women, by example and context, the social roles they could undertake.

Smith opened its doors 130 years ago, on September 9, 1875, with 14 students and 4 faculty members. The first students had to pass rigorous entrance examinations in eight subjects, including Latin and Greek. Contemporary critics, including some from Northampton, felt the demands were too great for women; a professor of divinity from Yale complained that students were coming down with brain fever every week because of the misguided attempt to educate them to know as much as men. People were afraid the college was going to fail, so much so that citizens owning land along Green Street that the college was seeking to buy to enlarge its campus, kept dropping the price. Shall I repeat that last phrase?

Of course, the college didn’t fail, and it has always held fast to the sense of social mission that Sophia Smith articulated. On the college’s 25th anniversary in 1900, its first president, Laurenus Clark Seelye, declared this about the accomplishments of the graduates: “As writers, teachers, and successful workers in varied professions, alumnae have given abundant proof of their intellectual attainments. Some of them have gone on as teachers and physicians to foreign lands, and have rendered valuable and heroic services during the massacres in Armenia and with the Red Cross corps during the wars in Greece and in Cuba. Many of them have become important agents in charitable work. They have organized and successfully maintained college settlements among the poor in our great cities. In cooperation with the alumnae of other colleges, they have investigated some of the most pressing social needs, and the best methods of satisfying them.”

In 1918, under its third president, William Allan Neilson, Smith made a bold move, reflecting its commitment to addressing social needs. It founded a School for Social Work, whose purpose was to treat soldiers suffering shell shock from their experience in the Great War. Neilson called it the riskiest venture of his presidency but, like the college, it proved to be a great success. The Northampton State Hospital provided the site of clinical training, and the Red Cross designated Smith as its East Coast training center for the psychiatric care of former servicemen.

The year 1917 saw another war effort important in Smith’s history, one still visibly commemorated on our campus. I am sure that many of you have noticed the iron gates that stand outside of College Hall, the symbolic entrance to the college. Known as the Grécourt Gates, they commemorate the work of the Smith College Relief Unit, a group of formidably courageous alumnae who went to France in 1917 to rebuild villages that had been destroyed by the war, not returning until 1920. In 1924, the college erected the gates to commemorate their work and to symbolize the responsibility every graduate has to use her education for the benefit of humanity.

I would like now to turn to the present day and talk about how I see the relationship of Smith to its community. All colleges, whether they be public or private, large or small, urban or rural, are part of a vital social contract. They have a responsibility to the communities that they inhabit. Colleges and universities are extraordinary resources, embodying the benefits of decades -- even centuries -- of public and private investment. They are extraordinary centers of knowledge, of intellectual power, of cultural resources. They have books, art, buildings, but, most importantly, they have people -- faculty, staff, students, and alumni.

As the recent, and devastating, experience of Hurricane Katrina has shown, every college can – and must -- extend its resources to the community. Moreover, institutions can be most effective in doing so when they extend themselves in ways that are appropriate to their mission.

Smith’s mission is tied vitally to education and the public good, and for that reason I believe one of our most important local links is with the public schools, providing, for example, resources for teachers and tutoring programs for children. We have focused a great deal of our outreach in that direction, reaching out to principals and teachers to find out how we can be a partner in meeting their students’ needs. One of my proudest recent accomplishments is the establishment of an educational outreach office at Smith, a one-stop source for educators in the Pioneer Valley and beyond to connect readily and meaningfully and with our faculty and resources, whether regarding exhibitions, performances, curricula or facilities.

But you represent social agencies, and, I am sure, are most interested in the ways in which Smith could be a resource for you and the people you serve. Let me share a few of the ways:

Smith has a program, known as Praxis: The Liberal Arts at Work, that provides a summer internship for every student during her time at the college. Here’s the neat part: the college pays the stipend. This is very unusual, possibly unique, and ensures two things: that students who rely on summer earnings need not forgo important career preparation; and that nonprofits and social service agencies have access to a pool of talented interns. Eighty-five percent of the internships students do as part of the Praxis program are in nonprofits, including the arts and cultural organizations, environmental fields, human rights and social action, health care, government and NGOs.
Smith has a leadership development program -- the Phoebe Reese Lewis Leadership Program -- in which a selected group of students partners with a nonprofit organization in our community to offer consultation services. Last year, the organization they assisted was Friends of Children; previously, it has been the Academy of Music. This year they will work on behalf of the Northampton Center for the Arts.
Recognizing that there is nothing like competition to spur people to action, I opened this academic year by requesting that each student residence take on a significant service project in the community. The house that commits most generously to this effort can select a charity of its choice, to which the college will make a donation in its name.
On the staff side, one of the first things I did at Smith was to develop a policy whereby every Smith staff member can take one paid day to do community service. Some have done so in group efforts, others individually. In addition, I have just authorized a policy enabling Smith employees to take a week of paid leave time to offer direct voluntary service in the Gulf Coast region, to help with hurricane relief and rebuilding.
Finally, SOS is the Service Organizations of Smith; this office is the central clearinghouse for volunteerism for members of the Smith community, particularly students. It is usually a good first stop for an agency seeking assistance.

In partnering with you, one thing I will ask is that you and your staff keep in mind the educational component of service in the lives of students. What makes a good service opportunity for a college student? There are three critical criteria:

Clear expectations. The student should have a clear sense of what she is being asked to do.
Mentoring. It is important for Smith that the experience be a learning experience and that the student receives supervision and advice.
Meaningful work. The student should do work that has a clear benefit and that could rightfully be described as service learning.

It is clear that colleges and universities, in the mind-power and person-power they encompass, hold great capacity for addressing our society’s challenges. Sophia Smith wished the college that she founded to serve as a perennial blessing to the world. This is more than a dusty, historical precept; it is a vibrant and living mission and one that I strongly endorse.