Remarks to Admitted Students
of the Class of 2003 and their Families
Spring Open Campus
Wellesley College
April 22, 1999

Diana Chapman Walsh
President
Wellesley College

I'm delighted to have this opportunity to add my official welcome to all of you -- admitted students and your parents and other family members, prospective Davis Scholars, families and friends. We're very glad you have come to check us out.

As you've already been told (you're probably sick of hearing it), you are an impressive group -- culled from a large and competitive pool of talented applicants. You have our admiration and our hearty congratulations for your many accomplishments. We're honored and pleased to have you here, giving us another serious look. We trust you're liking what you're seeing.

I know you've been doing your homework and are well equipped with the facts about Wellesley -- you've read the viewbooks, been on the website, talked to your teachers and counselors, and our admissions people, and probably to Wellesley students and/or graduates you know. Now you're developing a fuller feel for the place, sensing what it would be like to be a student here, testing out whether this feels like the college where you belong.

While you're doing that, I'd like you to be thinking of five things about Wellesley that we think make it a very special learning environment -- five characteristics of Wellesley I hope you'll notice while you're here -- the five fingers of one hand ... really all you need to know.

Academic Excellence

First and foremost, is academic quality. You know that we are one of the most academically challenging colleges in the country, that's why you are here today. We know that you're the kind of student for whom the richness of the academic program is a preeminent concern as you select the college that's right for you ... that's why you're here today too, here with an offer of admission from us.

Our commitment to academic excellence is evident everywhere you look. It's manifest in our faculty -- gifted teachers who are also scholars and who have themselves chosen Wellesley College as the place where they can flourish, learn, and continue to grow ... in the company of engaged and talented students who challenge them to do their best work.

Our faculty derive great satisfaction from participating actively in their students' growth -- in intellectual mastery, social consciousness, spiritual depth -- that's why they are here ... first and always to teach. And they are extraordinarily good at teaching -- as you've seen or will see if you visit some classes.

Our commitment to excellence is manifest in our facilities -- in classrooms, labs, studios, computer clusters and networks, playing fields and courts, an extraordinary museum and cultural center, and in a magnificent campus -- one of the most beautiful in the country -- which is much more than a nice amenity. The Wellesley campus embodies the hopes andaspirations of generations of pioneering women scholars and students who fought hard to build and maintain a landscape that would instruct, inspire, challenge, cajole and console them in their work.

We're very much a modern and future-oriented institution, as I think you'll discover as you hear about our programs in the sciences, in computers, in the social sciences, and in the wide array of innovative and interdisciplinary studies we now offer. But we also have a remarkable past, and it is very much alive here too, imprinted on the campus.

You'll feel the history, I expect, as you walk through the gothic stairwells -- with the granite steps that are worn in the middle by the generations of women who have walked these paths. As you tour the campus, you'll notice, too, that we're spending a lot of money right now on renovation -- the scaffolding around the tower is the most salient reminder. It will be down next fall and the tower will be as good as new.

The ubiquitous commitment to excellence is possible because of the resources we have -- a very large endowment that allows us to provide a very substantial subsidy (almost $20,000 a year) to the education of every student here, whether or not on financial aid. And that's possible because of the generosity of our alumnae and friends -- over many years -- and careful management of our resources. Our endowment per student ratio is among the highest anywhere -- and that translates to academic quality.

Competitive Financial Aid

It also translates to a very competitive financial aid program, my second point. As you know, we have a policy of admitting students exclusively on merit and aiding them exclusively on need to ensure that we can spread our financial aid dollars as equitably as possible. The trustees recently voted a major additional investment for financial aid, and we think our aid packages will be as generous as any you'll find.

Broad Curriculum and Intimate Scale

The third characteristic of a Wellesley education I want you to look for is also possible because of our resource base. We have a very broad and deep curriculum -- much broader than you might imagine. People who haven't taken the time to look sometimes assume that the price of the intimate scale of a place like Wellesley -- the small classes and close working relationships with faculty -- is a sacrifice in the range of course offerings. But that is simply not the case.

So I encourage you to compare our list of courses and of majors with those available anywhere. And as you make the comparison, bear in mind the additional fact that because we have no graduate students, it's the undergraduates who are using the advanced equipment in our science labs, and supporting social science faculty who are editing professional journals, and working side-by-side with studio art faculty, and on and on.

The undergraduates are the whole story here -- they are why we exist.

Diversity at a Women's College

The fourth observation about Wellesley that I hope you'll take home from this visit is our impressive diversity. We take great pride in the fact that we have one of the most diverse student bodies of any college in the country, and a more diverse faculty than most of our peer institutions. That diversity is an important resource for learning -- for developing the knowledge and ability to collaborate and communicate with fluency across a wide range of cultures, races, religions, and socieoeconomic groups.

The fact that we are so diverse means two things for you. First, it means that you should be able to find your own place here -- whoever you are, whatever you bring. Second, it means that you should be able to find others from whom to learn. If you come to Wellesley, your friends -- for the rest of your life -- will be from all across the country and all around the world -- incredible, energetic, passionate women from whom you will learn as much as you will from books and in classrooms.

An Education for Women

Now (you'll be saying to yourselves if you're still paying attention) there is one dimension on which Wellesley is not so diverse -- my final point. It hasn't escaped your notice, I trust, that we are a women's college. Students have various T-shirts they sell and wear proclaiming this fact with pride. My favorite one says on the back we are "not a girl's school without men but a women's college without boys."

Wellesley has made a very deliberate choice to remain a women's college. The choice reflects the belief that women have a particular contribution to make to the world and that providing the finest possible liberal arts education to a self-selected group of the best and the brightest women who choose to come here and who themselves have a consciousness of a better world they want to create is -- as our founder believed almost 125 years ago -- a cause worthy of our most passionate efforts. And we are passionate about this cause.

We had a visiting team here a few weeks ago to evaluate the college for re-accreditation and one of the comments they made as they left was how moving it was to sit in on our student Senate and see first hand that the women are running the place. It seemed like a pretty dumb comment -- what did they expect? -- but we take so for granted the fabulous women doing phenomenal things that we don't always stop to notice it, and it is noteworthy.

In just the past few weeks, for example, student groups have organized all sorts of amazing events on campus:

• a concert by the Capitol Steps (the Washington, D.C. singing group) who filled this auditorium to overflowing for an evening of hilarious political satire (and a few satirical songs written for our benefit -- poking fun at the president);
  
  
• a panel on Kosovo -- our faculty from four different departments piecing together a fuller picture of that terrible tragedy than it's possible to get from the press -- completely student initiated;
  
  
• a major conference on world events (just last weekend) -- 10 UN ambassadors and others, first chapters on any US campus of UNIFEM and UNHCR, organized by our students;
  
  
• a "girls day" at which a group of our students brought about 30 8th grade girls from an inner city school to campus to spend a day learning about college and meeting our students and faculty, in the hope that they will be inspired to work hard and dream large dreams;
  
  
• a new tradition, Wellesley history week,
  
  
• a Shakespeare Society play,
  
  
• several theatrical performances,
  
  
• a kerikoe concert,
  
  
• many parties and events in conjunction with the Boston Marathon,
  
  
• jazz, choir, and chamber music concerts,
  
  
• a 50th reunion concert for the Wellesley Widows, one of our a capella groups,
  
  
• a whole gamut of sporting events
  

... on and on.

There's lots going on all the time, much of it student initiated. It's a creative atmosphere in which every student can always find an opportunity to make a difference and succeed -- on campus while you are here and after you graduate.

I suspect many of you have already made your own connections with our far-flung network of graduates. They are doing all sorts of interesting things -- journalists, scientists, doctors, lawyers, judges, scholars, mothers, an astronaut -- our Commencement speaker last year. The broadcast journalist, Lynn Sherr will speak at graduation this year. She's a Wellesley alumna.

So is Nora Ephron (the writer and film director -- she did Heartburn, When Harry Met Sally, You've Got Mail, among other credits). She spoke at graduation three years ago; the year before was Madeleine Albright, and Cokie Roberts the year before -- a few of our distinguished alumnae. We broke from tradition two years ago and had Oprah Winfrey, who isn't an alumna, but who fell in love with Wellesley and talked about it on her show.

At graduation each year we sing "America the Beautiful," written many years ago by our own Katharine Lee Bates -- a Wellesley graduate and long-time English professor. The students always substitute "sisterhood" for brotherhood when we sing it; they shout it out with an exuberance that might have surprised the proper Professor Bates, but I don't think she would have been displeased, from what I've read of her.

The tradition of female leadership has been the hallmark of Wellesley's history. I'm the 12th president and the 12th woman president. If you get to the Clapp Library, be sure to look at the portraits of my 11 predecessors in the ante room just inside the entrance.

The sole exception was temporary -- and a cautionary tale. The College did once have a man as interim president for just a few months one summer in the 1970s (his portrait does not hang in the library). During his brief tenure, the 200-foot brick tower you saw encased in scaffolding was struck by lightning and badly damaged (you can see why we want to fix the tower). We learned our lesson, and women have stayed in charge here ever since and always will I expect.

I'm the fourth of Wellesley's Presidents to be an alumna of the College. I can tell you from first-hand experience that generations of Wellesley women (myself among them) ...

• have walked these beautiful grounds that you will walk today,
  
  
• have been affected in subtle but profound ways by their experiences here,
  
  
• have carried a part of Wellesley with them throughout their lives,
  
  
• have felt its expectation that they would give their best, do their utmost, would fulfill the promise a remarkable college had seen and nurtured in them,
  
  
• and have gone on to make their marks in the world in all sorts of inspiring, surprising, and inventive ways.

I hope you'll choose to join those women -- to join us. I know you won't be sorry, and it will be a joy for us to welcome you into this special place of learning.

Betsy Lawson elawson@wellesley.edu
Office for Public Information
Date Created: April 23, 1999
Last Modified: September 8, 1999