By Lee Hyo-won
``On my way to Smith College, / woods all the way, / my feelings grew more acute, / my thoughts grew deeper. / I asked: Is this the way to Smith College? / Oak trees and beech trees nodded, / saying : This way / or that way, / all lead to Smith College,” wrote Ko Un, Korea’s celebrated poet and longtime nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature, upon visiting the oldest and largest institute of higher education for women in the United States in April.
Some may think that single-sex education is an archaic tradition, but the route to Smith in Northampton, MA, is becoming a beaten path with a growing number of undergraduate applicants. According to the school’s president Carol Christ, this is because the school fosters a type of leadership that suits the times.
``There is no gender equity in the United States; but in women’s colleges, women have a powerful opportunity to develop a type of leadership that the world needs. Today it’s not about a command and control type of leadership -- like the G20 summit it’s about bringing multiple stakeholders to the table from multiple backgrounds and inspiring people to work collaboratively,’’ Christ told The Korea Times in Seoul, Wednesday.
Facts and figures suggest a powerful correlation between women’s schools and leadership -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for example, attended Smith’s sister school, Wellesley College.
``There is a disproportionate number of women’s school graduates in almost any given category of leadership -- 20 percent of U.S. congresswomen are women’s school graduates even though only 2 percent of female college graduates attended women’s schools. In a list of female leaders compiled by Fortune magazine, about a third had attended women’s colleges.
``There was a time when traditional men’s colleges went coed, and so did women’s colleges. But now women’s colleges are becoming more popular,’’ said the president.
Smith has been at the forefront of providing higher education for women since Ivy League schools did not become coeducational until the 1970s. Feminist icons Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, poet Sylvia Plath, ``Gone With the Wind’’ author Margaret Mitchell and star chef Julia Child are among celebrities boasting a Smith pedigree.
How exactly does the school instill leadership?
``At Smith it’s not about competing against men but it’s about freedom -- understanding who you are and what your ambitions are. First and foremost we give every student a chance to have a global perspective.’’
Among American liberal arts colleges Smith has the largest number of students who study abroad and former U.S. first lady Jacqueline Kennedy is an alumni of the school’s Paris Junior Year Abroad program. ``Smith has always been internationally focused and we are trying to become even more so. We have started this global initiative of trying to bring Smith to the world and the world to Smith.’’
It was for this very purpose that Christ was in town, as part of a six-city tour across Asia from Tokyo to Hong Kong, Singapore, Mumbai and New Delhi. ``It’s so clear how important Asia is to the future of the entire world, and to Smith. The G20 Seoul Summit is one example,’’ she said.
``We’re increasing the percentage of our international students to 12 percent and we expect to reach the number within two years. We have about 160 students from Asia, including roughly 60 Koreans. That’s a significant portion of the student body of 2,600.’’
While the school may be women-only, there is diversity, she said. Recently a group of Korean and Korean-American students and alumni raised $25,000 to purchase and donate ``New Asian Wave,’’ an installation piece by noted Korean-born artist Yong-soon Min, to the Smith Museum of Art. The school is also one of the few liberal arts colleges to offer a Korean studies department and the Korean Film Council designated Smith as a Korean cinema hub library, alongside institutions like Harvard. Smith also has various exchange programs with women’s universities around the world, including Ewha and Sookmyung here.
Another way to foster leaders is encouraging students to enter fields in which women are underrepresented. Smith became the first women’s school to offer an accredited engineering program, and Ford Motors supported the construction of Ford Hall, the largest building in the U.S. for women to study science. ``Women make up only about 12 percent in engineering. Ford felt they wouldn’t be able to design competitive cars without women’s input,’’ said Christ.
``I don’t believe any country can be an economic leader if it does not fully exercise the capacity of its women.’’
Christ attended Douglass College, a women’s school that is a part of Rutgers University. After earning a Ph.D. in English at Yale, she joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where she became the highest-ranking female administrator as executive vice chancellor of the College of Letters and Sciences. In 2002 she became president of Smith. Her husband Paul Alpers, professor of English emeritus at Berkeley, also serves as a professor-in-residence.