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Dear Members of the Sarah Lawrence Community,
Welcome!
This is the season of welcomes at the College:
- Welcome to the Class of 2028, to our new transfer students, and to our new graduate and professional students!
- Welcome (back) to our returning students and especially to our seniors in the Class of 2025, many of whom were studying abroad last year!
- Welcome to our youngest learners in the Early Childhood Center and welcome to our lifelong learners in the Writing Institute!
- Welcome to the start of the 2024-25 academic year!
In addition to the usual excitement and energy, we mark the start of this academic year in two important ways: the opening of the newly renovated Ruth Leff Siegel Center as the HUB and the kick-off of our year-long series on Polarization.
The HUB is an imaginative and adaptive renovation and repurposing of a beloved building that began its life as a gardener’s cottage at the gate to the Lawrence estate and subsequently served as an infirmary, a pub, and most recently a COVID-testing site. As we look to our second century, we’re delighted that a campus building so rooted in the College’s history is being transformed again to grow with and meet the needs of current and future students as a center for Humanity, Understanding, and Belonging. The renovation respects and celebrates the architectural past of the building, retaining and refinishing floors and trim where possible, exposing stonework, beautiful nooks and crannies, and unexpected angles, and restoring the shingled roof, while meeting today’s needs by opening up the flow of the building and making it fully accessible and more environmentally sustainable.
The building and the programming it will house are designed to nurture dialogue and mutual respect; to offer settings in which all members of our community can feel welcome, valued, and connected; and to cultivate a sense of belonging that permeates our campus and spreads beyond its bounds. We are grateful to the many students who took part in meetings and focus sessions over the last few years as we identified this potential transformation of the Pub, and especially last year as we made critical decisions about the project, down to details of furnishing and paint colors. The HUB features new meeting, gathering, and dining spaces available to all along with two kitchens for student use, one of which is designated Kosher/Halal. It also includes new homes for Common Ground, a space for our students of color and student-of-color identity groups; LGBTQIA Space; Spiritual Space; and WSLC, the college radio station. The construction phase is over, the “finishing touches” are underway, and the HUB – completed on time and on budget! – will welcome students later this week at the official opening and HUB Housewarming on Sunday, September 1. I couldn’t be more excited to see the ways our students will make this iconic space home and I look forward to sharing more with you as the year unfolds.
We also mark the start of the academic year with the first event in our year-long series on Polarization. Since my arrival at the College, each year we have identified a theme that is both timely and targeted, embarking in the inaugural year with Democracy and Education, which has served as an overarching umbrella for our work. Polarization, a challenge of our present moment that we witness and experience daily, both in our communities and globally, presents a significant threat not only to our individual well-being but to the very fabric of our society. We will consider not only the impacts of, but as importantly, the solutions to this threat. On September 5 we will launch this year’s series in conversation with prominent scholar Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr., a prolific author and political commentator and the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies at Princeton. Glaude’s latest book, We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, will serve as the point of departure for our conversation and I hope you will join us in person or online as we engage this critical topic together.
The HUB and Polarization are two vital ways as we begin this year that we are deepening our steadfast focus on fostering an environment in which all of our students – regardless of background, belief, or circumstance – have the unimpeded opportunity to actively and fully participate in the educational experience that is at the center of Sarah Lawrence’s mission, about which, I wrote to you last spring. As we move into the promise of this new academic year, I encourage each of us to commit to creating a community where humanity, understanding, and belonging are not just aspirations but lived realities.
I am excited to welcome our students, faculty, and staff to the 2024-25 academic year and look forward to the important work that we will pursue together at a time when the education Sarah Lawrence offers remains so very critical to solving the problems of and thriving in our complex and rapidly changing world.
Yours,
Cristle Collins Judd
President
president@sarahlawrence.edu
Instagram: @slcprez