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Sarah Lawrence College

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SARAH LAWRENCE COLLEGE
File:SLCSeal.JPG
MottoWisdom with understanding
TypePrivate
Established1926
PresidentKaren R. Lawrence
Location
Yonkers
,
New York
,
USA
CampusSuburban, 41+ acres
Address1 Mead Way, Bronxville, NY 10708
MascotGryphon
Websitewww.slc.edu

Sarah Lawrence is a private, independent, liberal arts college in the United States. It is located in southern Westchester County, New York, in the City of Yonkers, 15 miles (24 km) north of Manhattan.[1] [2] Sarah Lawrence was founded in 1926 as a women's college and became a coeducational institution in 1968. The College is known for its rigorous academic standards and low student-to-faculty ratio of 6-to-1. Individual student-faculty tutorials patterned after the Oxford/Cambridge system are a key component of all areas of study. Sarah Lawrence emphasizes scholarship, particularly in the humanities, performing arts, and writing, and places a high value on independent study. In The Best College for You, a 2000 co-publication of Time Magazine and The Princeton Review, Sarah Lawrence College was named the liberal arts College of the Year, citing the school's strong emphasis on writing as the key to its education.[3]

History

Westlands building

Sarah Lawrence College was established by real-estate mogul William Van Duzer Lawrence on the grounds of his estate in Westchester County and was named in honor of his wife, Sarah. The College was originally intended to provide instruction in the arts and humanities for women. A major component of the College's early curriculum was "productive leisure," wherein students were required to work for eight hours weekly in such fields as modeling, shorthand, typewriting, applying makeup, and gardening.[4] Its pedagogy, modeled on the tutorial system of Oxford University, combined independent research projects, individually supervised by the teaching faculty, and seminars with low student-to-faculty ratio -- a credo it retains to the present, despite its cost. Sarah Lawrence was the first liberal arts college in the United States to incorporate a rigorous approach to the arts with the principles of progressive education, focusing on the primacy of teaching and the concentration of curricular efforts on individual needs.[4]

In addition to founding Sarah Lawrence College, William Lawrence played a critical role in the development of the neighboring community of Bronxville, New York. His name can be found on the affluent Lawrence Park and Lawrence Park West neighborhoods, the Houlihan Lawrence Real Estate Corporation, and on Lawrence Hospital in downtown Bronxville, an institution that was created when Lawrence’s son, Dudley, nearly died en route to a hospital in neighboring New York City. Lawrence embodied ideas from the Progressivist movement of the 1890s, especially his view that the arts were a crucial element in the social evolution of individuals and families, in developing both private and public sensibilities, and in creating equal relations between men and women.

Harold Taylor, President of Sarah Lawrence College from 1945 to 1959, greatly influenced the college. Taylor, elected president at age 30, maintained a friendship with educational philosopher John Dewey, and worked to employ the Dewey method at Sarah Lawrence. Taylor spent much of his career calling for educational reform in the United States, using the success of his own College as an example of the possibilities of a personalized, modern, and rigorous approach to higher education.

Sarah Lawrence became a coeducational institution in 1968. Prior to this transition, there were discussions about relocating the school and merging with Princeton University, however the administration opted to remain independent.

Political involvement and activism

File:SLCprotestBronxvilleNY.JPG
Sarah Lawrence students protest against racial segregation outside of the Woolworth store in Bronxville, New York

Political activism has played a crucial role in forming the spirit of the Sarah Lawrence community since the early years of the College. As early as 1938, students were volunteering in working-class sections of Yonkers, New York to help bring equality and educational opportunities to poor and minority citizens, and the Sarah Lawrence College War Board, organized by students in the fall of 1942, sought to aid troops fighting in World War II. During a time when the College's enrollment consisted of only 293 students, 204 signed up as volunteers during the first week of the War Board.[5] During the so-called McCarthy Years, a number of Sarah Lawrence's faculty members were accused by the American Legion of being sympathetic to the Communist Party, and were called before the Jenner Committee.[6] Since that time, activism has played a central role in student life, with movements for civil rights and against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and for student and faculty diversity in the 1980s. Also in the 1960s, students established an Upward Bound program for students from lower-income and poverty areas to prepare for college.[7] Theatre Outreach, the Child Development Institute, the Empowering Teachers Program, the Community Writers program, the Office of Community Partnership, and the Fulbright High School Writers Program are among the many programs founded the since the 1970s to provide services to the larger community. In the late 1980s, students occupied Westlands, the main administrative building for the campus, in a sit-in for wider diversity. Students have remained active in recent years, with numerous organizations and movements sprouting in response to the Iraq War. For many years, the College has been considered as being at the vanguard of the sexual rights movement.

Academics

At the undergraduate level, Sarah Lawrence offers a Bachelor of Arts degree where, instead of traditional majors, students pursue a wide variety of courses in four different curricular distributions: the Creative Arts (creative writing, music, dance, theater, painting, and film), history and the social sciences (anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology), the humanities (Asian studies, art history, film studies, languages, literature, philosophy, and religion), and natural science and mathematics (biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, and mathematics). Each student is assigned to a faculty advisor, known as a "don," to plan a course of study. Most courses, apart from those in the performing arts, consist of two parts: the seminar, limited to 15 students, and the conference, a private, semi-weekly meeting with a seminar professor. In these conferences, students develop individual projects that extend the course material and link it to their personal interests. Sarah Lawrence has no required courses and traditional examinations have largely been replaced with writing final research papers and essays. Additionally, grades are recorded only for transcript purposes—academic evaluations are given in lieu of grades.[8] The College sponsors international programs in Florence, at Wadham College, Oxford, at Reid Hall in Paris, and at the British American Drama Academy in London. Additionally, Sarah Lawrence is one of the only American colleges operating an international program in Cuba (Hampshire College being one of the others).

Sarah Lawrence also offers Master's-level programs in Writing, the Art of Teaching, Child Development, Health Advocacy, Human Genetics, Theatre, and Dance, and is home to the nation's oldest graduate program in Women's History.

International programs

The College has six international programs in four countries. Sarah Lawrence makes all practical efforts to preserve its most characteristic elements, such as one-on-one interaction with professors, small classes, and an emphasis on qualitative comprehension, in its programs overseas.

  • Havana: The only formal American university program currently operating in Cuba, the program is open to students with an intermediate or advanced level of competency in Spanish, and focuses on language skills, the social sciences, and the humanities.
  • London: Centered at the British American Drama Academy, the program expands Sarah Lawrence's long-standing and vibrant tradition in the performing arts.
  • Oxford: An advanced academic program based at Wadham College, Oxford University in England.
  • Paris: Centered at historic Reid Hall in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris, the program is Sarah Lawrence's oldest and focuses on the humanities and creative arts.
  • Catania: Open to students who have an advanced comprehension of Italian, the Catania program takes advantage of its Sicilian setting to provide students with an experience in cultural immersion.
  • Florence: Open to students at all levels of Italian-language comprehension, the Florence program is noted for its art history program.

Graduate programs

Sarah Lawrence offers eight graduate programs, each of which confers the Master of Arts or Master of Science degree upon its graduates. In contrast to highly specialized, research-oriented doctoral study, these programs reflect the emphasis on interdisciplinary studies and the close student-teacher relationship that have come to be characteristic of the College's undergraduate program. Intensive work with faculty members, small seminars, and one-on-one conferences form the foundation of the curricular model. According to their own literature, the programs make an effort to balance the "theoretical (usually discussed in seminars and conferences) with the practical (in the form of fieldwork, practicums, research or creative work). This experiential work is most often conducted not in isolation, but in the midst of a community. Interdisciplinary work and ideas are encouraged, as is an ethic of social responsibility." There are approximately 340 graduate students currently enrolled in the following programs:

  • Art of Teaching
  • Child Development
  • Health Advocacy
  • Human Genetics
  • Theatre
  • Women's History
  • Writing

SAT and academic ranking

Main article: Criticism of college and university rankings (2007 United States)

In 2007, some educators in the United States began to question the impact of rankings on the college admissions process, due in part to the 11 March 2007 Washington Post article "The Cost of Bucking College Rankings" by Dr. Michele Tolela Myers, the former president of Sarah Lawrence College. As Sarah Lawrence College dropped its SAT test score submission requirement for its undergraduate applicants in 2003,[9] thus joining the SAT optional movement for undergraduate admission, SLC does not have SAT data to send to U.S. News for its national survey. Of this decision, Myers states, "We are a writing-intensive school, and the information produced by SAT scores added little to our ability to predict how a student would do at our college; it did, however, do much to bias admission in favor of those who could afford expensive coaching sessions."[10] At present, Sarah Lawrence is the only American college that completely disregards SAT scores in its admission process.[11] As a result of this policy, in the same Washington Post article, Dr. Myers stated that she was informed by the U.S. News and World Report that if no SAT scores were submitted, U.S. News would "make up a number" to use in its magazines. She further argues that if SLC were to decide to stop sending all data to U.S. News and World Report, their ranking would be artificially decreased.[12][13] U.S. News and World Report issued a response to this article on 12 March 2007 which stated that the evaluation of Sarah Lawrence is currently under review.[14] The most recent (2008) issue of the US News and World Report rankings has put Sarah Lawrence among the "unranked" insititutions, colleges and universities that for a variety of reasons do not adhere to the magazine's guidelines.

On Tuesday, June 19, 2007, following a meeting of the Annapolis Group, which represents over 100 liberal arts colleges, Sarah Lawrence announced that it would join others who had previously signed the letter to college presidents asking them not to participate in the "reputation survey" section of the U.S. News and World Report survey (this section comprises 25% of the ranking). Myers commented on this in a 20 June 2007 article for the New York Times by stating, "they will do what they will do, [...] we will do what we will do. And we want to do it in a principled way."[15] Myers also indicated in a press release for Sarah Lawrence that the college will be involved in developing the new database of colleges discussed in the Annapolis Group statement as they "believe in accountability and openness, and that the public has a right to solid and reliable information about the important decisions involved in choosing a college." The press release also indicated that Sarah Lawrence "plans not to participate in the peer reputational survey or data collection for U.S. News and World Report’s rankings" as, according to Myers, "by submitting data and the peer reputation survey we have tacitly been endorsing these rankings [...] all the information we have provided to U.S. News in the past will be available to the public through other channels."[16]

Tuition and finances

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sarah Lawrence College was the third most expensive college in the country for the 2006-2007 academic year. [17] The top three schools, George Washington University, The University of Richmond and Sarah Lawrence, each cost over $36,000 per year.

The total cost of tuition, fees, room, and board for a student entering in the fall of 2007 was $51,694 (tuition and fees were together $39,786).

Campus

Main article: Sarah Lawrence College Campus

The Sarah Lawrence campus is located on 41 hilly acres of grassy fields and rocky outcroppings atop a promontory above the banks of the Bronx River. Much of the campus was originally a part of the estate of the College's founder, William Van Duzer Lawrence, though the College has more than doubled its geographical size since Lawrence bequeathed his estate to the College in 1926. The terrain of the campus is characterized by dramatic outcroppings of exposed bedrock shaded by large oak and elm trees. Much of the older architecture on the campus follows the Tudor style that was popular in the area during the early 20th century, and many of the College's newer buildings attempt to achieve an updated interpretation of the same pattern language. It can be said that the campus is divided into two distinctive sections: the "Old Campus" and the "New Campus," wherein the former is roughly contained within the boundaries of the erstwhile Lawrence estate, and the latter is that which was obtained some time after the College's earliest years.

The area outside the original Lawrence estate is home to the College's more cutting-edge facilities. A number of stately, century-old Tudor-style mansions will be found among these newer additions, including Andrews, Tweed, Lynd, Marshall Field, and Slonim House. Each was once a private estate, purchased by the college during periods of growth and expansion. The more modest Tudor houses along Mead Way, which were also once private residences, now serve as dorms for Sarah Lawrence students. "Slonim Woods" is a group of newer, townhouse-style dorms, built on the grounds of Slonim House.

The Campbell Sports Center was constructed in 1998 in response to an increased focus on physical fitness and sports. This state-of-the-art facility includes an indoor pool, gymnasium, track, raquetball courts, and weightrooms.

In 2004, the College completed construction of a state-of-the-art visual arts facility, the Monika A. and Charles A. Heimbold Visual Arts Center, the sleek architecture and environmentally friendly aspects of which earned the College national press attention. Just down the road is Hill House, a seven-story apartment building purchased by the College in the late 1990s that now houses student residences. Across the street from Hill House is the large Wrexham house, also in the Tudor style, that was purchased by Sarah Lawrence in 2004 from the government of Rwanda. This building, which once housed the Rwandan consul, has been renovated and is used by the College for various graduate studies programs. On the opposite end of the campus stands the Science and Mathematics Center, completed in 1994.

Presidents

  • Karen R. Lawrence - (2007- present)
A noted scholar of James Joyce, holding a B.A. from Yale University, a Master of Arts in English Literature from Tufts University, and a Ph.D. in literature from Columbia University. [1] Before her tenure at Sarah Lawrence, Dr. Lawrence served as the dean of the School of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine from 1998 to 2007, and as a member and subsequent chair of the English faculty at the University of Utah from 1978 to 1997.
  • Michele Tolela Myers - (1998–2007)
Born in Morocco and raised in Paris. Myers holds a Ph.D. and a master's degree from the University of Denver, another master's degree from Trinity University in San Antonio, and a Diplôme in political science and economics from the Institute of Political Studies at the University of Paris. Myers saw the recent completion of a $75 million capital campaign at Sarah Lawrence, as well as the construction of several new buildings and facilities on the campus.
Served as an educational advisor to President Jimmy Carter, saw the expansion of the College's physical resources, faculty, and student body.
  • Charles DeCarlo - (1969–1981)
A former IBM executive, DeCarlo was a strong force in solidifying the College's finances.
  • Esther Raushenbush - (1965–1969)
A former member of the Sarah Lawrence literature faculty (1935–1946 and 1957–1962), dean of the College (1946–1957), and founder and director of Sarah Lawrence's Center for Continuing Education (1962–1965).


  • Paul Ward - (1960–1965)
A former engineering professor at the Carnegie Institute of Technology.
A longtime board member, Tweed increased the size of the College while refusing to enlarge classes.
  • Harold Taylor - (1945–1959)
Renowned for having remembered the names of every student on campus, Taylor, elected at age 30, was the youngest and perhaps most influential president in the College's history.
  • Constance Warren - (1929–1945)
Warren's primary contribution to the College was her recruitment of a nationally renowned faculty, amongst them the writer Marguerite Yourcenar [18], and her advocacy of a progressive educational philosophy in the College's early years.
  • Marion Coats - (1924–1929)
A friend of Vassar College President Henry McCracken and of Sarah Lawrence founder William Van Duzer Lawrence, Coats served as the College's first president.


Notable people

Main article: List of Sarah Lawrence College people
  • Fine Arts: The following alums are successful artists: Yoko Ono (artist, performance artist, and musician)
  • Fashion- Vera Wang, former Vogue editor and world-renowned fashion designer.
  • Literature/Biography - Amanda Foreman is the author of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. The book received wide critical acclaim and won the 1998 Whitbread Prize for Best Biography. Her book has been the subject of a television documentary, a highly successful radio play starring Dame Judi Dench, and a film, The Duchess (film) starring Ralph Fiennes and Keira Knightley.
  • In The Notebook, Rachel McAdams' character attends the institution.
  • While trying to get two non-lesbian women to copulate, Christian Bale in American Psycho states: "C'mon - you did go to Sarah Lawrence."
  • The 2002 film XX/XY (made by former SLC alumnus Austin Chick), examines the complex relationship between three Sarah Lawrence college students, both during their time at the school and then many years later.
  • In the first episode of season two of The Facts of Life, when Jo and Blair sneak into a bar and are talking to an undercover police officer, he tries to guess which college each girl attends and states that Jo is surely a Sarah Lawrence student because she wears "last year's jeans" and has a "couldn't be bothered" hairstyle.
  • The character of Karen on the hit show Will & Grace attended Sarah Lawrence, and she refers to it throughout the series.
  • In Mad Men, second season recurring character Bobbie Barrett's daughter is mentioned as being a part of the theater program at Sarah Lawrence.
  • Many of the events in John Sayles's 1983 film Baby It's You take place at the school, and the school's culture is a concern of the film's characters.

Athletics

File:SLC Gryphons.JPG

The College sponsors intercollegiate teams in crew, equestrian, men's basketball, men and women’s tennis, women’s volleyball, women’s softball, and women's swimming.

The College's official mascot is the Gryphon. It was chosen in the 1990s to represent the College's athletics teams after a long period of fielding sports teams without an official mascot. Unofficially the student body had long adopted the large resident population of Black Squirrels as a de facto mascot to the college. Given the squirrels often perplexing behavior, anti social nature, and coloring, it was a natural match to a student body often left feeling disconnected from the immediate community. The position of silent mascot that the Black Squirrel occupied was financially endorsed by the college itself with the production of various Black Squirrel merchandise (including Sarah Lawrence clothing branded with the Black Squirrel image) and plush toys. It is only recently (post 2003) that efforts on the behalf of the college to establish the Gryphon as the icon of Sarah Lawrence have begun to take root.

Publications

The school-sponsored newspaper at Sarah Lawrence is The Phoenix. The school also promotes "Sadie Lou," an online publication. It contains a student-run magazine, a guide to the Westchester area, and a list of student organizations. "Sarah Lawrence Library News" is a blog created by library staff.

Notes

  1. ^ Sarah Lawrence College Position Specification, page 7 ("Location: Campus and Facilities"). Retrieved January 3, 2007.
  2. ^ The Village of Bronxville website. ("Although nearby Sarah Lawrence College, founded in 1926 by William Lawrence to honor his wife, has a Bronxville postal address, it is actually located in Yonkers.") Retrieved December 27, 2006.
  3. ^ SLC honored for writing program that encourages students to write, think, communicate clearly
  4. ^ a b Kaplan, Barbara (26 February 2006). Becoming Sarah Lawrence. Sarah Lawrence College. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz (1993). Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the 1930s. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
  6. ^ Fried, Richard M. (1990). Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective. Oxford University Press. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |loation= ignored (help)
  7. '^ United States. United States Congress. Joint Committee. A Directory of Urban Research Study Centers. Washington: United States Congress, 1977.
  8. ^ "At a Glance: About SLC". Sarah Lawrence College. Retrieved 2008-01-29.
  9. ^ "Sarah Lawrence College Drops SAT Requirement, Saying a New Writing Test Misses the Point". The New York Times. 13 November 2003. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ Tolela Myers, Michele (11 March 2007). "The Cost of Bucking College Rankings". The Washington Post. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  11. ^ "U.S. News Statement on College Rankings". U.S. News and World Report. 12 March 2007. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. ^ Tolela Myers, Michele (11 March 2007). "The Cost of Bucking College Rankings". The Washington Post. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  13. ^ Jaschik, Scott (12 March 2007). "Would U.S. News Make Up Fake Data?". Inside Higher Ed. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  14. ^ "U.S. News Statement on College Rankings". U.S. News and World Report. 12 March 2007. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  15. ^ Finder, Alan (20 June 2007). "Some Colleges to Drop Out of U.S. News Rankings". New York Times. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  16. ^ "Sarah Lawrence College Endorses Annapolis Group Actions". Sarah Lawrence College.
  17. ^ The 10 Most Expensive Colleges
  18. ^ George Rousseau, "Yourcenar" 2004

Cappel, Constance, "Utopian Colleges," Peter Lang, 1999.

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