September 10, 2008

Dear Members of the Sarah Lawrence Community:

John Keats speaks of autumn as the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," but on a college campus, it feels more like a spring awakening. Not much is mellow about the beginning of the academic year at Sarah Lawrence. There is an air of excitement for those of us who have spent most of the summer on campus, as students and faculty return to begin fall term.

In the summer, the College hosts high school programs in writing, science, and the visual arts; adult programs in writing and film, professional development programs in child development and public health; and a meeting of college admissions counselors who experience the Sarah Lawrence atmosphere in and out of the classroom (good for them and good for us). This summer, for the first time, the White Mountain Summer Dance Festival took place at Sarah Lawrence, a productive collaboration that we hope will continue for many years.

It is in the fall, though, with the return of our entire faculty, who spend much of the summer pursuing their own research and creative work, and 1,200 undergraduates and 340 graduate students, that campus life really quickens. This ritual of return feels both the same and different every fall. The fall brings with it new students, new faculty and staff, reminding us of the importance of renewal. But the basic values of Sarah Lawrence—the small seminars, conferences, donning, and the intellectual passion and pleasure that are our hallmark—carry us from year to year. Now approaching 80, 40 years as a coeducational institution, Sarah Lawrence College continues to shelter study, discussion, writing, and the trying on of ideas and personae. It offers a safe haven for intellectual and creative risk-taking and for developing the individual.

Yet students come to Sarah Lawrence not to retreat from the world but to learn how better to live in it. Each academic year is different in part because we live in the larger world. September 2001 and 2005 brought unimagined and unimaginable tragedies, and our students, faculty, and staff joined with others in this country and other countries to cope with, understand, and respond to the attack on the World Trade Center and to Hurricane Katrina. As we begin the season of the presidential election, the specters of these two events infuse our political debate, directly and indirectly. A number of our students and faculty have been working in campaigns over the summer, and as the term begins, we will ensure easy voter registration and foster political discussion and engagement on campus in many ways. The multi-purpose tent we are erecting for Family Weekend will house a student dance on Halloween Friday and a luncheon for families and student performances on Saturday—and then remain on Westlands lawn through Election Day Tuesday, as we add big screen TVs and refreshments for a community election watch.

We begin the new academic year with several energy improvements on campus. Inspired by strong student interest and our Sustainability Committee, a group of students and our Operations and Facilities Office have teamed up to "green" Warren House on Mead Way. The group met weekly last year to determine how to renovate a house for sustainability, conducted research on energy conservation, created a blueprint for improvements, and set guidelines for energy efficient behaviors by the student residents. The house was insulated with recycled material, solar panels and energy-efficient appliances installed, and a vegetable garden added adjacent to the house, to be watered with rain collected from the gutters and stored in a 500 gallon container.

Elsewhere on campus we are installing a green roof, working with Sustainable South Bronx (an organization employing the first wave of "green collar workers"), and in the interest of minimizing wasted food, we are instituting "trayless Tuesdays and Thursdays" in Bates, a practice that has successfully led to a 25 percent reduction in waste on campuses that have initiated this program. When students do not have trays, they tend to select foods that they actually eat, resulting in less waste. We are also exploring an expansion of our efforts to buy from local food sources for our dining services.

"It is an exciting time and a critical time for Sarah Lawrence to assert its unique educational offering within the landscape of higher education."

Among our fall programs of local and global engagement, the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o will speak in October on the relationship between the local and the global in the languages that we speak. This award-winning novelist will comment on his life-changing choice to write in Gikuyu, his native language, rather than English, after his imprisonment by the Kenyan government more than 30 years ago. In late September, one of the leading scholars on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford, will speak on the Arab-Israeli peace process and challenges facing the next U.S. president. In November, Trevor Paglen, an artist, writer, and experimental geographer at the University of California, Berkeley, will discuss his examination of military installations in the United States and abroad.

The downturn in the American economy and its impact on both our families and our College's finances ties us deeply to conditions beyond Sarah Lawrence. We are affected also by changing expectations in the landscape of higher education, where some of our wealthier peer schools are replacing loans with grant aid and redefining financial need upward. In this atmosphere, it is imperative that we do two things: dramatically increase our resources for financial aid to families and articulate and demonstrate the value of a Sarah Lawrence education. Financial aid is one of two major priorities in our next fundraising campaign, allowing students from an even-wider spectrum of socioeconomic backgrounds to benefit from the stellar faculty and distinctive educational system we offer.

Forty-seven percent of our total expenses go towards instructional purposes, the highest ratio of our peer institutions. It is in the classroom that the Sarah Lawrence advantage is demonstrated daily and enduringly. Alumnae/i around the country whom I met during my travels last year repeatedly identified the extraordinary relationships between student and don, student and teacher, and our emphasis on independent learning, critical thinking, and creativity as the aspects of their education that made the SLC experience unique. Being Sarah Lawrence graduates, they naturally offered advice for improvement, but just as consistently, stressed that the value of their education was inextricably tied to the way we teach our students "how to learn."

To ensure the continued vitality of our unique educational model, our campus will engage in inclusive and rigorous strategic planning during this academic year. Begun last year in conversations with General Committee and continuing over the summer with surveys of campus constituents, this planning process involves students, faculty, staff, alumnae/i, and trustees. The last strategic plan for the campus was developed in 1997, so it is time that we reexamine, confidently and boldly, how to ensure the relevance and value of our distinctive educational model in the 21st century. As I wrote to faculty and staff last year, our discussion will allow us to extend the narrative of our Deweyan past into the future, addressing our challenges, strengths, and new opportunities.

Building on the real strides made at the College over the past decade, we will consider our strategic choices also in the light of changes in society and higher education. As we look to the creative management of our resources, the conversation will include exploring the possibilities of further productive partnerships of various kinds—with high schools, other colleges or arts organizations, and universities abroad—and expanded avenues for student internships. This planning process will help direct the goals of our next comprehensive fundraising campaign. The campaign, still at least a year away from its "public" phase, will enable us to endow our values. It will focus on the core areas of teaching, learning and scholarship, access and affordability, and student community and connection.

It is an exciting time and a critical time for Sarah Lawrence to assert its unique educational offering within the landscape of higher education. The quality of our entering students remains strong, our faculty is superb and continues to demonstrate an unparalleled dedication to their teaching, and our staff exhibit daily their deep commitment to the mission of the College. We have a wonderful group of trustees, including a new board chair, John Hill, whose leadership will help ensure the success of our efforts.

As I focus on the responsibilities of the presidency this year, I welcome the opportunity to understand our pedagogy from the inside. Beginning this week, I'll be in the classroom teaching a seminar, "Who's Afraid of James Joyce?" I look forward to a year of participating in the academic and social life on campus and to meeting our new campus community members as well as more of the extended Sarah Lawrence community, nationally and beyond.

Sincerely,

Karen Lawrence
President, Sarah Lawrence College