Spring 2004
I Chose St. Lawrence

The stories are everywhere: alumni trace their feelings of connection to St. Lawrence from their earliest interactions in the admissions process. Every prospective student is someone who will have a lifelong relationship with the University, and hundreds of people invest their best to help them understand well St. Lawrence’s mission and purpose. President Daniel F. Sullivan does his part; each spring, for example, he speaks to the students who have been admitted to the University. His recent full address is on the Web, but highlights are excerpted here. --LMC

I sat in 1961 where you sit today, trying to decide among St. Lawrence, Cornell, Rochester , Oberlin and Colby. I chose St. Lawrence, and I’ve never looked back. I hope you feel the same way many years from now about the college decision you are about to make.

Our primary task at St. Lawrence, clearly articulated in our mission statement, is “to provide an inspiring and demanding undergraduate education in the liberal arts to students selected for their seriousness of purpose and intellectual promise.” Right away that tells you several critically important things you need to know to understand us:

• We are committed to “inspiring” students, not just exposing them to new fields and ideas.

• We are “demanding,” because we know that if you have high expectations of students they will achieve great things.

• The education we provide, “in the liberal arts,” is education for a life, education that inspires students to be lifelong learners, that prepares students to make a difference in a wide array of careers, that encourages students to find meaning in what they do, and to better understand the great issues and questions that are at the center of the quest to be a learned, educated person.

• We are selective. We seek students who are serious of purpose because we believe that the rich array of opportunities for learning and growth St. Lawrence provides should be reserved for those students who are prepared and willing to dive in deeply to take advantage of them. A great education can’t just be “provided” to students. Students must engage—they must be active learners.
  
• We seek and enroll large numbers of serious students with very high intellectual achievement and promise; we also rejoice in teaching serious students of high intellectual promise who will be transformed by the process—who will achieve far more than they and others expect.

Research tells us that, among selective liberal arts colleges, the most effective colleges are those that are both very demanding academically and havea strong student orientation—they care deeply about students as whole persons and demonstrate that in their programs and investments. The big surprise in this research is that it is rare to find a liberal arts college that is both very demanding academically and highly student-oriented. We are one of those colleges.

We know from national surveys that St. Lawrence students are more engaged than students at other selective liberal arts colleges in co-curricular and extra-curricular developmental experiences supported by the University. At the same time, our students devote more time to their academic work on average than students at other colleges. We achieve a well-rounded student body by recruiting and admitting well-rounded students, not by bringing together a diversity of specialists. It is a strategic goal of the University that we will become even more student-oriented even as we continue to be very demanding academically.

This is a wonderful time for you to be thinking about coming to St. Lawrence. Investments and initiatives are taking place all across the curriculum—from the sciences and mathematics, to the arts, to the humanities and the social sciences. There is a vitality—a vibrancy—here that you should capture. Never in American history has the need for graduates of excellent liberal arts colleges been greater.

Residential liberal arts colleges, of course, are shaped by place—by their physical location and the history and culture of the region in which they reside. St. Lawrence is the American liberal arts college located closest to the capital of a foreign country. Our experience with Canada has led to a heightened readiness to develop programs of study abroad, (on the assumption that) having many more college graduates who understood something about cultures other than our own would be in the national interest. St. Lawrence plunged in early and with vigor, so that today about 40% of any given class studies abroad. And over 50% of the faculty have international training and expertise. The curriculum is full of international and intercultural studies across the disciplines, including the sciences, and the campus is always abuzz with debates, forums, lectures and discussions about world issues and world events.

Shaped too by the way in which our location constantly makes us aware of our physical environment, we are also a university that is serious about science and mathematics. Our success in those fields occurs because we are committed to providing science and mathematics students with a hands-on, investigative, research-rich educational experience. The nation’s top liberal arts colleges, among which St. Lawrence is one, graduate proportionately almost three times as many majors in science as the best American research universities.

The sciences and mathematics are thriving at St. Lawrence, and soon we begin the first phase of a $60 million program of new construction and renovation of our science and mathematics facilities. First up will be our biology, chemistry, biochemistry and neuroscience spaces. The number of students working with science and math faculty members in research is growing exponentially.

We’d like the opportunity to change the lives of you prospective students who are visiting with us today. If St. Lawrence becomes your choice, I can tell you that you will never regret it.