COLLEGE PRESIDENTS’ SERIES: KAREN LAWRENCE
New Sarah Lawrence President is “Coming Home”
By Emily Sherwood, Ph.D.
When Karen Lawrence assumes presidency of Sarah Lawrence College
in Bronxville, New York this summer, she’ll be, in her words, “coming home.” A
New Jersey native who attended Smith College and transferred to Yale just as it
turned coed in the early seventies, Lawrence (her name bears no genealogical
connection to the college – “no nepotism involved!”) received graduate degrees
at Tufts and Columbia before heading west for a career as an English literature
professor at the University of Utah and ultimately University of California,
Irvine, where she was tapped to be their dean of humanities in 1998.
Returning to her east coast roots will be more than a
geographical transition for Lawrence. “At a big research institution [like UC
Irvine], you’re always trying to create the intimacy and the dialogue in which
liberal arts colleges specialize,” explains Lawrence when in town recently to
meet with students and faculty prior to her August move. “But here at Sarah
Lawrence, the relevance of the liberal arts is not something that you have to
strenuously sell to anyone. Students who come here, and the faculty who teach
here, value the creativity, communication, problem-solving, analysis –
all the skills and knowledge that a liberal arts education is meant to give
you,” she adds, noting that Sarah Lawrence’s small student body (1200
undergraduate and 350 graduate students) and enviable six-to-one
student-faculty ratio enable a unique pedagogical philosophy that combines
student independence with lots of collaboration.
But providing the kind of intimate education Sarah Lawrence is
known for doesn’t come cheaply: tuition, room and board now top $50,000 a year.
“There’s still a long way to go in terms of being able to open the doors of
this incredible place to students who can’t afford it,” states Lawrence, noting
that Sarah Lawrence has a “small endowment compared to its peers… and that’s a
challenge.” She’d particularly like to increase diversity on campus: “The ethos
of this place is very welcoming to lots of different students…but
socio-economic diversity also depends on having an endowment that enables you
to offer extensive scholarships,” she concludes.
Known as an energetic and effective fundraiser, Lawrence
established several faculty chairs and masterminded funding for two major
centers in areas of writing and Persian studies at UC Irvine. She further led
an initiative for diversity in faculty hiring and humanities outreach programs
to underserved areas.
Academically, Lawrence pledges to build on “some of the exciting
expertise that’s already here – the arts are terrific.” That could
include strengthening the college’s strong tradition of visual arts and visual
culture, building on interdisciplinary courses that combine computer science
with the arts, enhancing environmental science studies (“that’s very much a
part of the ethos of Sarah Lawrence; there’s a lot of student concern about the
greening of the campus”), and supporting creative writing (a longstanding
distinction of the college.) Lawrence is also “committed to [the college’s]
philosophy of wedding theory and practice – practicing artists together
with critics, theorists, scholars, and teachers.”
Will Lawrence, a James Joyce scholar whose favorite work by the
author is Ulysses, find
time to teach at Sarah Lawrence? Because of the intense time commitment that
the college’s “don” system requires of its faculty (like Oxford, Sarah Lawrence
requires its professors to engage in intensive, one-to-one faculty advising),
combined with Lawrence’s overarching administrative responsibilities, “we’ve
compromised… I’ve already been asked to participate in a class where they’re
studying Ulysses.” And
she’s thinking ahead to Joyce’s birthday next February, with plans of a
literary celebration in the works.
On the subject of town-gown relationships between Sarah Lawrence
and its surrounding communities of Bronxville and Yonkers, which have not
always been smooth, Lawrence is “very eager” to be a good neighbor. She’s been
in touch with both mayors and wants to have a three-way meeting to “talk about
Sarah Lawrence’s relationship to both Yonkers and Bronxville.” As always, she’s
got some exciting ideas up her sleeve. She’d consider expanding existing
community partnerships that bring Sarah Lawrence students and faculty into
Yonkers theaters, schools, and libraries. She’d also invite community members
to campus to involve them in the intellectual life of the campus: “Since I’m
going to be living in the [President’s] house, and the house is a public space,
I would very much like to have students, faculty, and community people coming
together to hear speakers and to have panels. So this ought to be a
destination,” she adds.
Lawrence has a lot to do between now and August when she
officially takes residence on Kimball Avenue in Bronxville. She’s feverishly
putting the finishing touches on a book about “a live writer”, Christine
Brooke-Rose, which has involved trips to Paris (the novelist’s home) as well
the archival site in Texas. But nobody would doubt that Karen Lawrence is up to
the task ahead: “I feel very prepared,” she says quietly, but with a sense of
purpose and affirmation that will doubtless continue to define her very
successful career as she returns “home” to the east coast.#
