Shameless plug for a school rarely mentioned here: Sweet Briar College of Virginia

Parents Forum
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<p>Disclaimer: I have no connection past, present or likely will have in the future with SBC other than our family's attending several summer music institutes there with our daughter some years ago (last time in 2000).</p>

<p>It's an all women's liberal arts college in a rural setting near Lynchburg, VA.</p>

<p>Why I mention it - ranks in top 100 LAC's by USNews, for those interested. Scored well when the alternative assessment to USN&WP's rankings, the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) first came out; was listed early on by WIRED magazine as a "most wired" campus - it was the first one, including mine, I'd been on with a 1/1 ethernet drop/pillow ratio - before that became a standard feature on most campuses. </p>

<p>It had and has several joint engineering programs with other VA schools. The music faculty we encountered were first rate. </p>

<p>There appeared to be quite a few opportunities for international study.</p>

<p>The campus is beautiful - wooded rural setting. We stayed in the dorms, overall, quite nice.</p>

<p>Check out their website (wish they'd ditch the pink theme, though :-) ). at <a href="http://www.sbc.edu%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.sbc.edu&lt;/a> .</p>

<p>I mention it as I've noted posts from folks looking for alternatives to the better known LAC's as well as one that might be in the South. I have very happy memories of those summer programs and being there.</p>

<p>Just a thought.</p>

<p>Sincerely,</p>

<p>Bill</p>

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<p>There are a number of all female colleges that are excellent admissions bargains. Wells in NY (just went coed, I believe), Simmons in Boston, Agnes Scott, Mary Baldwin, Chatham, Mills. Underrated in my book.</p>

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<p>Sweet Briar got a generally positive write-up in the Fiske Guide as well. </p>

<p>Depending on your point of view, however, it has a lot of history to overcome. When I grew up in the South, it was a pure "finishing school" for wealthy Southern society girls. A place where you could major in "giving a dinner party", "how to do your hair", "white gloves for all seasons", or "proper etiquette for an afternoon lunch at the club". In many ways, it was the female counterpart to Washington & Lee except that, back in the day, women were expected to "know their place" in Southern aristrocracy. Showing any visible sign of intelligence or intelligence was considered taboo.</p>

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<p>Worked for Jackie K-O.</p>

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<p>I think highly of Sweet Briar. I think a little more highly of its neighbor to the South (R-MWC) but that's alumna bias for you. LOL Seriously, though, I was surprised to find S-BC outranked Hollins and R-MWC; I think they're quite similar in their strengths. I'm known very accomplished women who've graduated from each of these.</p>

<p>S-BC has a great riding program, too.</p>

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<p>The faculty I met at Sweet Briar joke about that history - a good sign, in my book, that they have come to terms with it and moved on. </p>

<p>A lot of the following is posted with tongue firmly in cheek, hopefully everyone (including partisans of a certain Ivy mentioned below), will take it in that spirit.</p>

<p>I'm familiar with SBC's history. It's also a history common to many US women's LACS - a recent Julia Roberts movie comes to mind <grin>. That's one reason I mentioned the engineering joint programs. </grin></p>

<p>Many southern schools I am familiar with have histories that don't evoke much pride in today's terms but have, in large measure (but not always - I have to point that out - some really bad ideas die hard) been acknowledged for what they were and discarded. Looking at the Princeton Review's SAT listing, SBC is lower than some, a bit higher than some.</p>

<p>As a funny but true aside, another regional public Kentucky university had, in 1975 (and several years afterwards), a "finishing" program for young women that reportedly covered many of the topics you listed, taught by the president's wife. My university had mandatory chapel up to 1972. </p>

<hr>

<p>Looking at the Chronicle of Higher Education's 4FEB05 issue (requires subscription, sorry, can't post workable link), one finds an article re: Harvard 40 years ago (towards the end of my period of growing up in the South <grin>, ) excerpted as follows:</grin></p>

<p>Can Harvard Ever Play a Positive Role for Women in Higher Education?
By MYRA H. STROBER</p>

<p>Some 40 years ago, when I was applying to graduate schools for a Ph.D. in economics, I had an interview with a prominent Harvard University professor. Not more than two minutes into the interview, he asked me, "Are you normal?"</p>

<p>"What do you mean?" I asked, puzzled. </p>

<p>"Well, do you want to get married and have a child?"</p>

<p>"I'm already married." </p>

<p>"Well then, why would you want a Ph.D.?" </p>

<p>and she concludes the article with:</p>

<p>"As for me, I can't help noticing that Harvard and MIT seem to be as different today as they were 40 years ago."</p>

<p>(She's a senior Stanford professor now)</p>

<hr>

<p>Harvard's (ducking incoming from Byerly and Northstarmom :-) ) leadership seems to still have some issues in this area ($50mil over 10 years to rectify gender inequity isn't much given Harvard's total budget. I imagine they spend more on groundskeeping).</p>

<p>I'm not picking on Harvard, just pointing out that these issues die hard and while not as obvious as the finishing school thing, are just as problematical.</p>

<p>The US still doesn't have a constitutional amendment guaranteeing gender equality. A bill was just introduced into the US Congress that would curtail many of the advances women have made in the armed forces. Sometimes it takes a long time for people to learn, sometimes they never learn. But I think SBC and many of its siblings have acknolwledged their past, learned from it and moved on.</p>

<p>To change the subject: </p>

<p>As our students for the most part left last week after our university's graduation Saturday, I have entirely too much time on my hands so that I can compose overly long and wandering replies as I happily await my D's high school baccalaureate tonight (she's performing Massenet's Meditations from Thais), the regional youth orchestra's peformance (concertmaster) tomorrow night, and her graduation Friday night (salutatorian speech). I am one proud father. I'll also be up all night as a parent volunteer at her school's project graduation program - not an easy task at my age <grin>.</grin></p>

<p>Oh! Oh! - just remembered a really funny one re: SBC. During the 2000 summer institute, she performed a version of Meditations. The program for the solos had been set up really late the previous night. Her piece was billed as "Medications from Thais" It blew right through the spell checker, I imagine. That was cool.</p>

<p>Forgive the overly long post. Idle hands and all that.</p>

<p>Sincerely,</p>

<p>Bill</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Harvard's (ducking incoming from Byerly and Northstarmom :-) ) leadership seems to still have some issues in this area ($50mil over 10 years to rectify gender inequity isn't much given Harvard's total budget. I imagine they spend more on groundskeeping).

[/quote]
</p>

<p>That is why Larry Summers found himself under attack for his hypothesis that women aren't capable of excelling in science. It would be one thing had he been an advocate for women at the university. But, Harvard's efforts to add women to the tenured faculty had ground to a screeching halt under his leadership, an issue that was already raising eyebrows before his ill-considered speech.</p>

<p>I like Prof. Tim Burke's suggestion that Summers would have shown real guts if he had stood up there and just said that hiring women faculty at Harvard was simply more "bother" than it was worth.</p>

<p>I agree with you, though. The histories and traditions at these schools die hard. In fact, I don't think they die at all. Those histories tell us a lot about the schools today.</p>

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<p>I think the number of paying students looking for a finishing school style college has dwindled--even in the old South. There is a large subset of female students who feel the need to bring a horse to college. I think RMWC has nicer stables but they are far off campus. SB has stables and acres of trails right on campus. Actually I am a little surprised they don't have hitching posts in front of the campus buildings.</p>

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<p>I'm surprised that Hollins didn't come out better in the ratings. Their Writing Program has been well known for many years.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
That is why Larry Summers found himself under attack for his hypothesis that women aren't capable of excelling in science.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Part of the reason Larry Summers found himself under attack was the large number of people who misinterpreted his comments in just this way</p>

<p>These were not his theories. I don't know that he's done any work in this area. </p>

<p>He was reporting that there are theories that there may be differing gender aptitudes for certain disciplines. And that these differing aptitudes might[ provide some explanation for why fewer women pursue science and math as academic careers.</p>

<p>Now, you may question those theories, or their explanatory power. And you might question whether Summers should have recounted these theories. But they are not his, and he did NOT say that women "were not capable of excelling" in science. I don't the work he was referring to said such a thing, either.</p>

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<p>My sentiments exactly, Hoedown. Now he's got to spend 50 million dollars to kiss up to those who've criticised him.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
I don't know that he's done any work in this area.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Which is precisely why he left himself open for attack. Why would he casually present hypothesis from fields of study that he knows nothing about?</p>

<p>From the social scientist reading I've done on the Summers issue, the hypothesis that females are genetically incapable of doing first-rate science doesn't have much support in the literature.</p>

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<p>His remarks, given the stature of his position, came perilously close to giving undeserved validity to a "theory" that at best can be discounted as an academic urban legend and a worse comes very close to the ideas advanced by the eugenicists of the early part of the last century (uh-oh, getting powerful close to invoking Godwin's Law <grin>), that "genes" utterly trump environment when one of the Pres. Summers' own Harvard colleagues, one Richard Lewontin, has demonstrated that that's not the case in rather conclusive terms.</grin></p>

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<p>
[quote]
Which is precisely why he left himself open for attack. Why would he casually present hypothesis from fields of study that he knows nothing about?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>There is an expectation--and not unreasonable, in my particular field-- that a college president (particularly from a prestigious research university) can handle an informal discussion of research regardless of the academic field from whence it was produced. One expects a president to be well-read, well-informed, and well-spoken. </p>

<p>Now, he might have failed in one or more of those, but the idea that he mustn't speak outside of his field is, to me, odd.</p>

<p>One further point--Where was it said they are "genetically incapable" of doing first-rate work or "not capable of excelling?" It's a rather hamfisted way of restating a theory which I was led to believe involved aptitudes and shades of differences between them. The theories may indeed be wrong, and be disproven, but I don't believe at any time they involved stating that females are wholly incapable of excellence in math/science.</p>

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<p>KYDad - Thanks for starting this thread on Sweet Briar! I think "shameless plugs" for excellent schools that don't get much press are extremely useful and introduce students to many excellent alternatives for their college selection that might not ever hit their radar otherwise. Keep on plugging away!</p>

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<p>
[quote]
There is an expectation--and not unreasonable, in my particular field-- that a college president (particularly from a prestigious research university) can handle an informal discussion of research regardless of the academic field from whence it was produced.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>This wasn't an "informal discussion". </p>

<p>Summers delivered a prepared speech, in a formal setting, to a group of academic professionals, as President of Harvard University on the topic of the lack of women in the sciences. In this setting, he CHOSE to include, as one of his three points, unspecified, uncited "research" that women may be innately incapable of top-shelf science. Don't give me this "informal" stuff. It was completely premeditated with every opportunity for him to consider the impact of his remarks, especially since he was already under fire for reversing efforts to attract and keep top female professors at Harvard. </p>

<p>If he just want to spout off, he should get a nickname on an internet board (like "interesteddad") and then he can propose all kinds of half-baked ideas!</p>

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<p>Way to hijack another thread, ID! :) Can we please at least talk about the wonderfulness of Swarthmore, or the drunken racist jocks at other schools you don't approve of--since, you know, we're on the subject of Sweet Briar College? :) </p>

<p>Perhaps you should start a thread dedicated <em>exclusively</em> to all the schools which, in your humble opinion, "have a lot of history to overcome" so that NO parents or kids will ever make the mistake of EVER considering any school lacking the InterestedDad Seal of Obsessive Compulsive Approval :) :) </p>

<p>If you want to talk about Larry Summers again, start another thread in the parents cafe, where you will be beaten like a drum, up one side of the street and down the other, just like last time. Leave these folks alone! What is wrong with you, man?</p>

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<p>I don't usually complain, Driver, but your post seems to be perilously close to a personal attack.</p>

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<p>I apologize for perhaps seeming overly personal, but you really are ubiquitous here with your critiques of schools not Swarthmore. Why is it that someone can't start a thread about a seldom heard-of school that they particularly like, without you popping up like a whack-a-mole out of nowhere to burst their bubble with negative commentary? "History to overcome?" For Pete's sake, and Sheesh, as well. I just don't get it. I have to go to bed, I'll leave you to your 24/7 operations at the InterestedDad Command Center.</p>

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<p>I'll grant you that the dicussion was not "informal. " Let's be clear, though: Summers was not overreaching himself trying to fake a discussion about heirarchical linear modeling of gender determinism with a group of neurobiologists. He was among academic colleagues at a special conference of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He said he was "unofficially" asking questions and provoking discussion by presenting "his best guesses" as to the rank order of the factors' explanatory power. He put the aptitude thing in the middle of the three he discussed.</p>

<p>What really confuses me, and what leads me to continuing highjacking this poor thread, is your continual misstatement of the research he mentioned. </p>

<p>Summers clearly stated he was talking about people more than three standard deviations above the mean. Positing that at that level aptitude plays some role is quite a bit different than your statements that Summers said women are "genetically incapable." Good grief! It may be just as offensive or irritating, of course, and it the findings may be debateable, but I think this distinction matters. The man is in enough trouble without you putting words in his mouth which he never said.</p>

<p>On the other hand, maybe it's a different statistical standard you bring to the table. If your reading of statistics is that people who differ within the incredibly selective echelon of four deviations above the mean are "incapable" ...well, it would be no wonder if you couldn't summon respect for S-BC. LOL.</p>

<p>To address the topic at hand: Are S-BC colors still pink and green?</p>