Dear Alumnae and Friends of the College,

In a March 10 Forbes magazine interview, Peter Drucker cataloged improvements in communication technology and predicted: "The College won't survive as a residential institution. Today's buildings are hopelessly unsuited and totally unneeded." That some earlier Drucker predictions have failed the test of time is modest solace to those with a stake in this one being wrong.

But is it? Only if the physical place we occupy is so essential to our educational mission that it cannot be replicated, simulated, or rendered obsolete in cyberspace. That's a bigger question than I have space on this page to tackle, but one that bears careful thought.

One element of Drucker's challenge&emdash;the question of how being a residential learning community enriches our students' intellectual and moral development&emdash;has been much on our minds. Underscored by concerns many of you have voiced that we may not be paying adequate attention to our landscape as a precious and irreplaceable asset, it has led us in several new directions.

First, we constituted a visiting committee, tapping (as we're so often able to do) the deep reservoir of talent among our own alumnae and faculty. Chaired by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers '57, the committee comprised Mary Downey Coyne MA'61, Peter Fergusson, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz '63, Jane Canter Loeffler '68, Julie Moir Messervy '73, and Ellen Gill Miller '73. The group came to campus October 7 and 8, 1996, reviewed the condition of the grounds, met with concerned members of the college community, and delivered an oral report followed by a frank, tough, pragmatic, and visionary written report.

We made that report widely available and discussed it with the trustees. Margaret Jewett Greer '51, chair of the board's committee on landscape and grounds, participated in all of the deliberations, including those of the visiting committee. One of the recommendations was that we recruit a horticulturalist to the Wellesley grounds staff, and this we have done in the person of J. Patrick Willoughby, who comes to us from 15 years at Harvard's Arnold Arboretum.

A second recommendation was that we commission a firm to help us develop a comprehensive campus maintenance and management plan, one that can function as a powerful decision-making tool. It will guide the placement of any future new buildings or additional uses of the landscape, systematically address the vexing problem of automobiles, create priorities for campus improvements, and project long-term budgets and needs.

Most importantly, it will embed these managerial considerations in a broader context, taking account of the history and enduring mission of the College, our vision of how we want Wellesley to look twenty-five years from now and our educational aspirations. It will grow out of extensive consultations with all constituencies, in a process designed to "build understanding for the campus as a work of landscape art as well as an educational and recreational resource," as Betsy Rogers stated in a November 1996 letter to me.

We now have a committee working on the selection of a firm to develop this plan with us. We commenced its first meeting with an open invitation to anyone with a perspective she or he wanted the committee to hear. The session drew a sizable turnout of students, faculty, staff, neighbors, and retirees. One participant's Will Rogers quotation expressed everyone's basic worry: "Real estate....They ain't making any more of that stuff."

The most powerful messages we heard spoke of and from the "soul" of the college. It addressed the "genius" of the campus: how privileged students feel to be studying "in a park"; the sense of calm, repose, and privacy afforded by the lake; the human scale and balance of the campus and its many distinctive components; the seamless reciprocity between buildings and grounds, "gesturing" to each other and backward and forward in time; the wide-ranging opportunities, not yet fully realized, for capitalizing on the campus as a rich learning laboratory.

Meanwhile, in fall 1997, the Davis Museum and Cultural Center will be sponsoring an exhibition of Frederick Law Olmstead and its second annual "Fair Grounds," combining scholarship, critical thinking, experiential learning, and celebration related to our landscape and grounds. The themes will be incorporated into orientation for first-year students and into parents' weekend.

We have urgent work to do, as Betsy Rogers's committee impressed on me, but we also have support: "Ask any alumna," she wrote. "The name 'Wellesley' may evoke acollection of friends, a favorite professor, the choice of a major that became a lifetime field of interest, or the first rung on the ladder of a career, but above all else, it will evoke memories of a particularly beautiful place.... Wellesley's institutional excellence is integrally linekd to its special beauty." We are committed to taking care of this magical place and grateful for your many expressions of concern.

Diana Chapman Walsh '66

President, Wellesley College