Filed under:
Dear Members of the Sarah Lawrence Community,
Earlier this week, we held the first faculty meeting of the year and I’d like to begin this issue of From the President’s Desk the same way I began that meeting: by expressing my deep gratitude for the heart and soul of Sarah Lawrence, our faculty. Their passion, expertise, and unwavering dedication to our students are crucial to making SLC the extraordinary place it is, and I am thrilled that our faculty has again been recognized as #1 in The Princeton Review’s "Professors Get High Marks" category in this year’s Best 390 Colleges. While we all know college rankings don’t always get things right, this one most certainly does!
Also this week we gathered for the annual reception celebrating new faculty chairs and the winner of the Lipkin Family Prize for Inspirational Teaching. This is always a truly joyous occasion and one of my favorite events at the start of each academic year. Kanwal Singh, Provost and Dean of Faculty, said it best during the event, that “in awarding these chairs and the Lipkin Prize, we recognize and celebrate the totality of what it means to be a member of our profession—a member of the academy. We honor our colleagues for their work in the classroom, in their scholarly and artistic work, in their work for the broader good of the College—in all the things through which they bring vitality and vibrancy to all of our lives here—not only for their students but also for us, as colleagues.”
See the sidebar for our newest faculty chairs, and join me in congratulating them and this year’s Lipkin Prize winner, history faculty member Matthew Ellis.
***
As the academic year settles into its rhythm I’d like to take this opportunity to share with our entire community what I’m focused on: above all, it is the broad, long-term planning and development of resources necessary to ensure that Sarah Lawrence continues to thrive into its second century. We begin the year with full enrollment, new initiatives, and strong momentum as we focus on multi-year planning to support the human, physical, and financial resources that underpin our ever-present commitment to the extraordinary education Sarah Lawrence provides. It’s important that we celebrate these critical accomplishments even as we recognize that they are not last steps but rather the latest steps on the way to much larger goals and milestones.
Supporting our employees has to be at the heart of what we do as a College. There is no question that the greatest resource for accomplishing our educational mission is our faculty and staff; at the same time, employee compensation is the greatest expense we incur in our highly personalized and deeply relational model of education. I am firmly committed to fostering a sustainable environment in which faculty and staff feel valued for their vital contributions. Last year, through the collaboration of numerous faculty and staff committees and with the full endorsement of the Board of Trustees, we embarked on a multi-year plan to better align our employee compensation, which frankly has long lagged, with that of peer institutions. We were able to implement the first step in this plan this year, which represents a truly significant step forward, but there is more work to be done. There is a blunt reality that impacts this work: our present financial resources are insufficient to adequately meet our values and aspirations. So my commitment to investing in faculty and staff includes a commitment to doing the work necessary to bridge that financial gap.
Building on strengths of the College by developing new partnerships and deepening existing ones is a key facet of supporting our academic work and enhancing and expanding opportunities for our students. Last week, I gathered in New York City with faculty, students, and administrators from SLC and NYU to celebrate the official launch of our new master's degree in Genome Health Analysis, which just admitted its first cohort of students! As I’ve shared with you before, this degree developed in partnership with NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine continues Sarah Lawrence's long tradition of creating innovative educational programs to meet critical societal needs. The close work between SLC’s graduate program in Human Genetics and Institute for Genomics Education, Workforce & Leadership and NYU’s Vilcek Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences has been a model of what true collaboration looks like, resulting in a brand new degree that neither institution could have offered on its own and, most importantly, 
expanded opportunities for students. I'm pretty confident this is the first partnership of its kind between a small liberal arts college and a major medical school and I couldn't be prouder that Sarah Lawrence is leading the way for innovation in higher education. (And in the “some things are meant to be” category, Anna Cantor, pictured with me here, who serves as the NYU co-director of the program along with Claire Davis from SLC, is a 2014 graduate of SLC’s Human Genetics program!)
Ongoing renewal of our beloved campus is another critical avenue of planning and investment. We celebrated an important milestone with the opening of The HUB on time and on budget on September 1, which I shared with you at length last issue. Student response to the HUB has been fantastic as they settle into the space and programming ramps up. But the HUB represents more than a renovated physical space on campus; it is the first step in a broader plan of adaptive reuse of existing campus buildings to better serve the evolving needs of our community.
The next step focuses on the space previously occupied by the bookstore in the Performing Arts Center. We envision this space as a new home for the areas of the College that expand the walls of the classroom and open the doors of opportunity for students beyond campus, including Career Services, Community Partnerships, SLC EmbeddED, and Global Education. John Dewey’s maxim “education is not preparation for life; education is life itself” deeply informs the experiential learning at Sarah Lawrence that is our superpower. Co-locating these offices will increase their visibility and ability to collaborate and, in turn, better serve students. Looking further into our long-term vision for campus, the moves into the HUB and PAC will open up valuable square footage in Bates that can then be renovated for much-needed academic spaces, including faculty offices and classrooms. We have much work to do on our century-old campus, but as you can see, we are undertaking a long overdue thoughtful, ongoing, and sustainable revitalization of our facilities of which these are truly meaningful first steps.
***
These critical steps on the path to our second century are possible only with the support and involvement of everyone in the Sarah Lawrence community. I hope you share with me a profound sense of pride in what we are accomplishing together. And I hope you feel as energized as I do about what lies ahead. With each step we take, we are building a future that honors our history and legacy while boldly embracing new opportunities and creating innovative educational solutions to the world’s complex problems in ways that only Sarah Lawrence can. More to come!
Yours,
Cristle Collins Judd
President
president@sarahlawrence.edu
Instagram: @slcprez
Davis World Scholars
We welcomed and celebrated the largest cohort of Davis UWC Scholars in SLC history this month! SLC has a long and proud history of partnering with the Davis United World College (UWC) Scholars Program to matriculate exceptional young people from around the world in support of the program’s goal of advancing international understanding through education. We are delighted to have this year’s cohort at SLC.
Congratulations: Part 1
Congratulations to our new faculty chairs:
Drew Cressman (Biology)
The Sara Yates Exley Chair in Teaching Excellence
Una Chung (Literature)
The Joseph Campbell Chair in the Humanities
Carolyn Ferrell (Writing, MFA Writing)
Ellen Kingsley Hirschfeld Chair in Writing
Melissa Frazier (Russian, Literature)
The Ilja Wachs Chair in Outstanding Teaching and Donning
Heather Harpham (MFA Writing)
The Strachan Donnelley Endowed Visiting Professorship in Environmental Writing
Brian Morton (Writing, MFA Writing)
The Michele Tolela Myers Chair in Writing
Kristin Zahra Sands (Religion)
The Harlequin Adair Dammann Chair in Islamic Studies
And, once again, congratulations to History faculty member Matthew Ellis for being honored with this year’s Lipkin Family Prize for Inspirational Teaching.
Congratulations: Part 2
Today at the National Society of Genetic Counselors annual conference, Laura Hercher, Director of Research in the Human Genetics graduate program, is being honored with The Natalie Weissberger Paul National Achievement Award. The most distinguished honor of the NSGC’s awards program, it honors an individual with exemplary national achievements and volunteer activities on behalf of NSGC and the profession. Congratulations, Laura!
In Case You Missed It: Part 1
One year after the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling, Dean of Admissions Kevin McKenna discussed the impact of the decision on the college admission process and the class of 2028 with correspondent Laura Jarrett on NBC Nightly News.
In Case You Missed It: Part 2
Our Polarization: Impacts + Solutions event series kicked off earlier this month with a conversation between me and prominent author and political commentator Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr. You can watch it here. A related event coming up soon is “White Dudes for Harris, Women for Trump: Political Media and the 2024 Election” on October 9. Part of the Gender and Women’s History Collective, the event is headlined by Claire Potter, who writes the Political Junkie Substack and produces its affiliated book podcast, “Why Now?”