Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College is a co-educational, four-year
liberal arts college in
Bronxville,
New York,
United States.
Founded in
1928 as a
women's college, Sarah Lawrence College first officially opened its doors to men in
1968.
Sarah Lawrence is located in the Lawrence Park section of Yonkers, New York, (though listed in the postal zone of Bronxville), and is about a thirty-minute train ride north of
New York City. It has an undergraduate student population of 1,197 in addition to 314 graduate students, and is renowned for its strong writing and performing arts departments. The college boasts a low 6-to-1 student-to-faculty ratio and a nontraditional but rigorous, individualized approach to academics.
At the
undergraduate level, Sarah Lawrence offers a
Bachelor of Arts degree where, instead of traditional
majors, students take a wide variety of courses in four different curricular distributions: the creative arts (
creative writing,
music,
dance,
theater,
painting,
film),
history and the
social sciences (
anthropology,
economics,
political science,
sociology), the
humanities (
Asian studies,
art history,
languages,
literature,
philosophy,
religion), and
natural science and
mathematics (
biology,
chemistry,
physics). Each student is assigned to a faculty advisor, known as a "don," to plan a course of study. Most courses (apart from courses 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. The College sponsors international programs in
Florence, at
Oxford, at
Reid Hall in
Paris, and at the British Academy of Dramatic Art in
London. Additionally, Sarah Lawrence is one of only three American colleges operating an international program in
Cuba.[
1]
Sarah Lawrence also offers Master's-level programs in
Writing,
Child Development, Health Advocacy,
Human Genetics,
Theatre, and
Dance, and is home to the nation's oldest graduate program in
Women's History.
Early history
|
Westlands, completed in 1917, is the oldest building on campus. |
Founded in
1928 by pharmaceutical and real estate mogul
William Van Duzer Lawrence on the grounds of his estate and named for his wife,
Sarah Bates Lawrence, Sarah Lawrence College was originally constructed as a finishing school for affluent young women in rapidly expanding
Westchester County. William Lawrence played a critical role in the development of the community of Bronxville near the present-day Sarah Lawrence campus, and his name can be found on the affluent Lawrence Park neighborhood adjacent to the campus, and at 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.
William Lawrence worked closely with Henry MacCracken, the president of
Vassar College, to establish a school that was founded on ideas of educational reform that MacCracken felt unable to apply at Vassar. The College was modeled with the tutorial system of
Oxford University in mind, and a low student-to-faculty ratio was considered to be of absolute importance. Followed by
Bennington College, 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. Sarah Lawrence began to take its present shape shortly after
World War II, when the College began admitting male students on the
G.I. Bill, though the school did not become fully coeducational until 1969.
Although his wife, Sarah Bates Lawrence, was progressively minded in the sense that she believed in a
woman's right to vote and to a formal education and had worked to fund women's colleges throughout the nation, the values of the Lawrence family as a whole do not accurately reflect the present shape of the College. William Lawrence believed that the role of a young woman's education was to train her for polite society, and the nature of that society was not questioned. Sarah Lawrence College was founded with these social values in mind.
During the early years of the College, student lifestyles were thoroughly regulated. Students could neither keep a car nor ride in one without the accompaniment of a chauffeur, and men could be entertained only during restricted hours and under the close watch of a staff supervisor. A major component of the curriculum was "productive leisure," wherein students had to work for eight hours weekly in such fields as
modeling,
shorthand, typewriting, applying make-up,
gardening, and other disciplines that today seem quite opposite from the College's curricular composition.
Development of today's Sarah Lawrence College
It was perhaps Harold Taylor, President of Sarah Lawrence College from
1945 to
1959, who had the greatest influence on shaping the College as it is known today. 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.
Political involvement and activism
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 working in working-class sections of Yonkers, New York to help bring equality and educational opportunities, 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 was at only 293 students, 204 signed up as volunteers during the first week of the War Board. 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. For more information on accusations of Communist Party sympathies, click [
2]. Since that time, activism has played a central role in student life, with movements for
civil rights 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. 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 at the vanguard of the
sexual rights movement.
The Sarah Lawrence curriculum has for decades been regarded as a model for the
20th century American movement toward progressive and highly personalized
education. In terms of its faculty, the College neither recognizes faculty rank nor fosters a "publish or perish" environment in hopes of cultivating an atmosphere that regards teaching as the foremost function of the faculty. Graduate assistants never teach classes, and the resources offered by the College's six-to-one student to faculty ratio, the lowest in the nation, are capitalized on with small classes and intensive one-on-one conferences between students and professors in a system patterned on the
Oxford method of "donning." Students are generally limited to taking three classes each
semester in hopes of allowing the student the opportunity for a thorough engagement with the course's material. The administration does not make attempts to standardize departmental syllabi or teaching procedures, leaving each professor free to design his or her own curriculum.
Sarah Lawrence does not use
grades for the purposes of student competition or as a singular representation of a student's achievement in a given course. While grades are recorded for
transcript purposes, they have been replaced in practice by lengthy, detailed evaluations written by the course's professor at the end of each semester. These evaluations are meant to reflect the student's progress rather than give a certain numerical depiction of adequacy, and the student's work in his or her conferences, within the class itself, and on the various papers and assignments expected in each course are taken into account in their construction.
Sarah Lawrence does not offer traditional major fields, and each undergraduate is awarded a
Bachelor of Arts in
Liberal Arts. Students work closely with their faculty mentor, or "don," who is assigned in the student's first year, to design a curricular concentration and to ensure that the student does not receive an unfocused education. The don will often encourage the student to integrate his or her courses through the student's conference work or through various outside projects.
Donning
With a curricular system that lacks a sturdy infrastructure of regulations and rules, the Sarah Lawrence student runs the risk of having an unfocused education. The College has ensured that such a problem be easily avoided through its system of "donning," modeled after a similar approach used at Oxford University. In his or her
freshman year, each student selects a first-year seminar, the subject matter of which is meant to correspond to their potential fields of interest in their future studies. These seminars are often interdisciplinary in organization. The teacher of this seminar becomes the student's "don," or close academic advisor, who will remain with the student until graduation unless the student chooses to change dons for reasons of his or her own choice. No student is obliged to stay with a particular don. Transfer students, who do not take first-year seminars at Sarah Lawrence, are assigned dons by the administration with the reminder that the assignment is random. Over the years, the don will assure that the student's course choices are balanced and not unfocused and that the student meets all necessary requirements for
graduation. The don serves as more than an academic advisor, though, and can intervene in disputes between the student and the administration, staff, or faculty, or in times of distress on the part of the student. It is not unusual for students to form lasting personal relationships with their dons that persist well after the student has left the College.
The three-course system and the "Third"
Another unique and, perhaps, peculiar component of the curriculum at Sarah Lawrence is the three-course system that is employed in all four years of study. Students are limited to taking only three courses in a given semester, with exceptions being made only after the student has successfully petitioned the appropriate administrative committees. Just as at many other colleges, a full-time courseload comprises fifteen credit-hours each semester, thereby leaving the value of each course at five credits per semester, with yearlong courses (which, unlike at most American
colleges and
universities, are quite common) being valued at ten credits. The idea behind limiting the students' number of courses is not to limit the workload. Instead, the purpose is to allow each student to become thoroughly engaged with the material of each class. Moreover, with the student being required to meet in a one-on-one conference with his or her don (see "Donning," above) at least every other week, and with a sustained and extensive project being expected as the result of these conferences, most students feel as though they have six courses each semester rather than three.
In order to eliminate a number of curricular and pedagogical problems posed by the three-course system, the College has provided an option known as the "Third," wherein one or more of the three courses taken in a given semester is replaced by related components. For example, since the
performing arts require that a series of component classes be taken rather than one large, general course, the student takes a "Theatre Third." In such a situation, the student would be taking several mini-classes (for example: vocal techniques, the
Alexander Technique,
Shakespearian acting, etc.), the sum of which are counted on the student's transcript as one course. The Third, therefore, allows students access to more specialized professors and a more thorough foundation in the discipline. Thirds are also commonly used for music and
dance. Yet another option is the "Language-Lecture Third," wherein the student takes a foreign-language course in addition to one of the four semester-long lecture courses required for graduation. The two courses are counted on the student's transcript as one course, thereby allowing the student to take four courses for the price of three. The Language-Lecture Third was implemented after a number of students expressed a reluctance to devoting a full third of their curriculum to the study of a foreign language.
International programs
The College has become known for its thorough and creative international programs and currently sponsors six of them 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.
*
Cuba. 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 at
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.
*
Catana. Open to students who have an advanced comprehension of
Italian, the Catana 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 music and
art history program.
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 twentieth 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 old campus
The centerpiece of the Old Campus is Westlands, an enormous manor house that was custom-built for the Lawrence family during the
1910s. Upon its completion in
1917, its extraordinary architecture and graceful proportions earned it a spot on the front page of
The New York Times. William Lawrence also had a small gazebo constructed on the north lawn of his estate, which has since been fully enclosed and now houses the College's "Teahouse," serving students a variety of baked goods and beverages. A stable and carriage house at the extreme southern end of the estate, now known as Sheffield House, has since been converted to faculty office and classroom space. One of the College's first purpose-built buildings, Bates, named for the architect of all of the original buildings on campus, is an enormous facility that has housed variously over the years classrooms, offices, a basketball court, and art studios. It is now devoted almost entirely to student recreational facilities. The four original dorm spaces on campus, which are casually referred to as "The Old Dorms," were completed in the
1920s and early
1930s, the construction of which was supervised by William Lawrence's son, Dudley Lawrence, for whom one of the buildings is now named. These dormitories are still quite popular among students, and also house a number of classrooms, a lecture hall, and faculty offices. Across the North Lawn from the Old Dorms stand three buildings constructed in the
Modernist architectural style and designed in the late
1950s by world-renowned architect
Phillip Johnson. Known as the "New Dorms," they house traditional and apartment-style living spaces. On the South Lawn of Westlands stand the Ruth Leff Siegal Student Center, the DeCarlo Performing Arts Center, and the Esther Raushenbush Library.
The new campus
The area outside the original Lawrence estate is now host to some of the College's more cutting-edge facilities, though a number of stately, century-old
Tudor style mansions are still found among these newer additions, among them Andrews, Tweed, Lynd, and Slonim Houses, all of which were once private residences. In
2004, the College completed construction of a state-of-the-art visual arts facility, the Monica A. and Charles A. Heimbold Visual Arts Center, the sleek architecture and environmentally friendly aspects of which earned the College national press attention. Not far from this facility is the less-glamorous but equally practical 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 a large, unnamed manor that was purchased by Sarah Lawrence in
2004 from the government of
Rwanda. This building once housed the Rwandan
consul, and will not be used by the College until the city of Yonkers agrees to its rezoning. On the same end of campus is the College's athletics and physical education facility, the Campbell Sports Center. On the opposite end of the campus stands the Science and Mathematics Center, completed in
1994.
Athletics
Sarah Lawrence College is a member of the Hudson Valley Women's' Athletic Conference (HVWAC), the Hudson Valley Men's' Athletic Conference (HVMAC), the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association, and the United States Rowing Association. Most of the College's athletics programs are centered at the Campbell Sports Center on the southern end of the campus, though the College operates its
equestrian program at nearby facilities. Although athletics have never been a central facet of the Sarah Lawrence experience, and despite the lack of athletics scholarships, many students choose to participate in the school's various sports programs and the College requires a nominal amount of physical education participation for graduation. In addition to the programs listed below, the College occasionally sponsors a number of other sports, such as
cross-country and men's
crew, according to student demand. The teams play officially with a
griffin as their mascot and with a dark green as their
color.
*
Women's athletics programs**
Crew**
Equestrian**
Softball**
Swimming**
Tennis**
Volleyball*
Men's athletics programs**
Basketball**
Equestrian**
TennisCurrent president
The current president is Michele Tolela Myers, who has served since
1998. Born in
Morocco and raised in
Paris, President 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. President Myers has seen 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. Dr. Myers announced in late
2005 that she will retire in the summer of
2007.
Past presidents
*
Marion Coats (
1924â€"
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.
*
Constance Warren (1929â€"
1945). Warren's primary contribution to the College was her recruitment of a nationally renowned faculty and her advocacy of a progressive educational philosophy in the College's early years.
*
Harold Taylor (1945â€"
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.
*
Harrison Tweed (Acting President, 1959â€"
1960). A longtime board member, Tweed increased the size of the College while refusing to enlarge classes.
*
Paul Ward (1960â€"
1965). A former engineering professor at the
Carnegie Institute of Technology.
*
Esther Raushenbush (1965â€"
1969). A former member of the Sarah Lawrence literature faculty (1935â€"1946 and 1957â€"1962), dean of the College (
1946â€"
1957), and founder and director of Sarah Lawrence's Center for Continuing Education (1962â€"1965).
*
Charles DeCarlo (1969â€"
1981). A former IBM executive, DeCarlo was a strong force in solidifying the College's finances.
*
Alice Stone Ilchman (1981â€"
1998), who served as an educational advisor to President
Jimmy Carter, saw the expansion of the College's physical resources, faculty, and student body.
Among the College's more recognizable alumni are television personality
Barbara Walters, actresses
Téa Leoni,
Larisa Oleynik,
Jill Clayburgh, and
Joanne Woodward, film director
Brian De Palma, singer
Carly Simon, composer and choreographer
Meredith Monk, dancer
Jean Erdman, fashion designer
Vera Wang, writers
JJ Abrams and
Ann Patchett, poet
Lucy Grealy, and
Pulitzer Prize-winning writers
Alice Walker and
Louise Gluck. Several notable people have attended without receiving degrees, including conceptual artist
Yoko Ono, photographer
Linda McCartney, and actor
Cary Elwes.
As a result of its small class sizes and unique fusion of informality and rigor in its academic environment, Sarah Lawrence has been able to attract a number of high-profile faculty members that is perhaps disproportionately large for a school its size, including winners of the
Nobel Prize,
Pulitzer Prize,
Academy Award, and
Emmy Award. Among the more notable of these educators who are currently teaching at the College are novelist
Melvin Jules Bukiet, Middle Eastern Affairs expert
Fawaz Gerges, poet
Marie Howe, and economist
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, III. Past faculty members have included world-renowned mythographer
Joseph Campbell, film director
Brian DePalma, writer and thinker
E.L. Doctorow, choreographer
Martha Graham, composers
William Schuman,
Norman Dello Joio and
George Tsontakis, master violin teacher
Dorothy Delay, leftist intellectual
Susan Sontag, and poets
Billy Collins,
Galway Kinnell,
Grace Paley, and
Muriel Rukeyser. In 2005, current faculty member
Eduardo Lago won the oldest literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world, the
Premio Nadal.
"
.
* In one episode of the sitcom
Frasier,
Gil Chesterton reveals that his wife is an SLC graduate.
* In an episode of the animated Fox sitcom,
The Simpsons, the Thai restaurant owner says to new employee Bart, "You hang Thai menu on door. I get more business. Send daughters to small, liberal arts college.
Swarthmore. Maybe, Sarah Lawrence. Call professors by first name."
* In an episode of
Gilmore Girls, Louise complains about the work assigned to her by Paris. Paris responds by saying that Louise will be grateful when she gets into Sarah Lawrence. In another episode when Paris is rejected from Harvard, Rory tries to cheer her up by listing other schools that she can attend, including Sarah Lawrence.
* The college is mentioned in the book (and later, the film),
American Psycho* In the film
10 Things I Hate about You, Katarina Stratford wants to attend SLC.
* In the television show
Will & Grace, Karen remarks that she attended Sarah Lawrence.
* A mention of the college is found in the
Joseph Heller novel,
Good as Gold.
* Sarah Lawrence is referenced in the
J.D. Salinger novel,
Franny and Zooey.
* It has been suggested that the bucolic east-coast college in the
Don Delillo novel
White Noise is based on Sarah Lawrence.
* In the
Dani Shapiro novel,
slow motion: a true story, Sarah Lawrence is mentioned.
* In the film
The Notebook, Allie Hamilton attends SLC before becoming engaged to Lon Hammond Jr.
* In the television show "
Designing Women", Charlene Stillfield (
Jean Smart) is belittled for her lack of pedigree by her mother-in-law-to-be's old-money Mississippi family, with reference to the college.
* In the television show
Entourage,
Rex Lee's character, Lloyd, was an art history major at Sarah Lawrence.
* Sarah Lawrence alumna
Ann Patchett based part of the setting of her novel,
Bel Canto, on the President's House on the Sarah Lawrence campus.
* In an episode of
Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Sabrina is transported to the 1960s and tries to apply to an all-male college. The college official suggests Sarah Lawrence instead.
* In the
John Sayles film
Baby It's You,
Rosanna Arquette's character, Jill Rosen, attends Sarah Lawrence College and is introduced to a culture unlike her
New Jersey upbringing.
*
The Joseph Campbell Controversy refers to former Sarah Lawrence faculty member Joseph Campbell who was a globally renowned
mythographer and anthropologist who was (and perhaps still is) the College's most well-known professor. After his death, Campbell was accused in an article by
Brendan Gill, "The faces of Joseph Campbell" from
New York Review of Books (Vol. 36, #14, September 1989, pp. 16â€"19) of being
anti-Semitic. Gill, who identified himself as a friend of Campbell from the Century Club in New York City, notes in the article that he wrote it in reaction to the enormous popularity of
The Power of Myth series in 1988. This article was followed up by "Brendon Gill vs. Defenders of Joseph Campbell-Joseph Campbell: An Exchange" from
New York Review of Books (Vol. 36, #17, November 9, 1989, pp.57â€"61), a series of letters from former students and colleagues which argue against the accusations, as well as a response from Gill. The controversy compelled at least one professor, a Jewish member of the literature faculty who at one point was a colleague of Campbell's, to turn down an offer for the position of the "Joseph Campbell Chair in the Humanities".
*
The College Mascot is officially a
griffin, a mythological creature with the head of an
eagle and the body of a
lion. The griffin was chosen in the
1990s to represent the College's athletics teams after a long period of fielding sports teams without an official
mascot, and was chosen as a symbol of strength and intelligence. In practice, however, most students identify their mascot not as the gryphon, but as a black
squirrel, a number of which can be found on the campus. The decision to associate more with the squirrel than with the gryphon seems to have little to do with a rejection of the strength and intelligence associated with the latter than with an affinity for the characteristics for the former; that is to say, these squirrels are
neurotic, hostile, antisocial, clad in black, and are rarely seen during the winter, much like a stereotypical Sarah Lawrence student. As a result, the squirrel and the color black have come to be the
de facto symbols of the College, with the student-run café, for example, operating under the name "The Black Squirrel."
# Kaplan, Barbara.
Becoming Sarah Lawrence. Sarah Lawrence College. 26 February, 2006 23:09 UTC [
3].# Kaplan, Barbara.
Becoming Sarah Lawrence. Sarah Lawrence College. 26 February, 2006 23:09 UTC [
4].#
United States.
Congress. Joint Committee.
A Directory of Urban Research Study Centers. Washington: United States Congress, 1977.#
Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz.
Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the 1930s. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993 (2nd edition).# Woodard, Komozi.
A Nation Within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999.# Giuliano, Brenda; Giuliano, Geoffrey, eds.
The Lost Lennon Interviews. London: Omnibus Press, 1996.#
Campbell, Joseph.
The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work. New York: Harper and Row, 2003 (2nd edition).# Simbeck, Rob.
Daughter of the Air: The Brief Soaring Life of Cornelia Fort. New York: Grove Press, 1994.# Fried, Richard M.
Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.# Sarah Lawrence College.
Sarah Lawrence College President to Retire. Sarah Lawrence College. 27 February, 2006 01:33 UTC [
5].
*
Official website**
College Tour**
History
