President's Blog

Wonderful visits this week to alums in D.C., Baltimore, and Warrenton VA.

• Alums from the class of ’44, telling stories about what it was like being part of a wartime class at Sweet Briar and celebrating 65 years of friendship with one another.
• Alums from the 70s, reflecting on what it was like attending a women’s college at a time when role expectations and assumptions about gender were being turned on their heads.
• Alums from ’08 and ’09, sharing the challenges of what is IS like graduating from college and looking for work in an economy in turmoil.

And all of them, from ’44 to ’09, paying tribute to their alma mater for giving them the skills, persistence, and resilience to cope with whatever comes their way.

What fun it is for Rick and me to meet these women!

Two pieces of news about Sweet Briar creative writers — Carrie Brown‘s story “Bomb” has been recognized by Glimmer Train, taking first place in the September Open Fiction competition. It will be published in August, 2010, in the Fall 2010 issue of Glimmer Train Stories. (There’s a YouTube video of Carrie Brown, and her husband and fellow Sweet Briar faculty member John Gregory Brown reading as part of the Colgate University Living Writers series here, if you’re interested.)

Poet John Casteen gave a reading at Lynchburg’s Riverviews Artspace this week. An interesting interview with him appeared in the Lynchburg News and Advance. I was struck by one quote from that interview. John writes not only poetry but also opinion pieces on matters of policy. He described the difference between the two kinds of writing this way: “The editorials are for things I’m convinced about,” he said, “and the poems are about things I’m uncertain about.”

Liberal education seems to me to be essentially about pushing students to explore the things they’re uncertain about, in the lab, in the library, in the studios. But the role of fine and performing arts in provoking thought and creating discussion about the things that we are all, by virtue of our humanity, uncertain about is irreplaceable. The artists, and the supporters of the arts, who enrich us in this particular way are inspiring to me.

Last week I visited my mother in assisted living. Next to her bed were two novels, one by John Gregory Brown (which Mom had finished) and one by Carrie Brown (which she had just begun.) Mom’s comment on the two novels was “Family’s a funny thing, isn’t it? People have such different experiences” which led her to raise a series of questions about her own early life as a daughter and sister. Thanks, John and Carrie; your work provided an occasion for me to have a wonderful and unusual conversation with my Mom.

Today a newspaper story appeared in the Lynchburg News and Advance about the budgetary issues I’ve written about in previous posts.

All in all I think the story does a good job of balancing two equally true and equally important points: Sweet Briar is, relatively speaking, in quite  good shape and at the same time Sweet Briar is not (and could not expect to be) immune from the larger economic forces that are challenging colleges and universities across the country. Making the sacrifices we need to now, in order to live within our means in the present, is the surest course to continued strength and future growth.

Comments and questions about this year’s budget and the college’s plans are welcome.

Lisa Johnston of Sweet Briar’s Cochran library has been recognized by ACRL (the Association of College and Research Libraries) as “Member of the Week.” Check out the profile here. To give you a sense of who Lisa is, here’s one sample quote:  “It is energizing and endlessly interesting working with intellectually engaged people, particularly during this time of great technological change.”

It’s great to see Sweet Briar featured on the website of the nation’s leading organization for academic libraries.