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.
