Skidmore College

Skidmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college in Saratoga Springs, New York. Approximately 2,500 students are enrolled at Skidmore pursuing a bachelor of arts or bachelor of science degree in one of more than 60 areas of study.

History
Skidmore College has undergone many transformations since its founding in the early twentieth century as a women's college. The Young Women's Industrial Club was formed in 1903 by Lucy Ann Skidmore (1853–1931) with inheritance money from her husband who died in 1879, and from her father, Joseph Russell Skidmore (1821–1882), a former coal merchant. In 1911, the club was chartered under the name "Skidmore School of Arts" as a college to vocationally and professionally train young women. It "prepares illustrators, designers, dieticians, accountants, secretaries and costumers."

Charles Henry Keyes became the first president of the school in 1912, and in 1919 Skidmore conferred its first baccalaureate degrees under the authority of the State University of New York. By 1922 the school had been chartered independently as a four-year, degree-granting college.

Skidmore College was first located in downtown Saratoga Springs, but on October 28, 1961, the college began to move to the Jonsson Campus, 850 acre of land on the outer edges of Saratoga Springs. The Jonsson Campus was named for the Skidmore trustee Erik Jonsson, the founder and president of Texas Instruments and a former mayor of Dallas, Texas (1964–71).

Trustee Josephine Young Case delivered a challenge on the development of the new campus, a speech which to this day guides Skidmore's development. For example, on Scribner Library she wrote, "And at the heart of the beating center, you must set the library where every book wanted is immediately at hand, and a thousand others wait beside them to be discovered."

In 1971, the college began admitting men to its regular undergraduate program (a few dozen male World War II veterans had been admitted in 1946 - 49). Skidmore also launched an innovative program called the "University Without Walls" (UWW), which allows nonresident students over the age of 25 to earn bachelors degrees. The program closed in May, 2011. Finally, Skidmore established a Phi Beta Kappa chapter.

Skidmore faculty formed the Collaborative Research Program in 1988, which provides students with opportunities to co-author papers and studies with professors. Skidmore began granting masters degrees in 1991 through its Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) program. The Skidmore Honors Forum was founded in 1998.

2006 marked the start of the largest campaign in Skidmore's history, named ''Creative Thought. Bold Promise.'' The goal was to raise $200 million, which was reached and surpassed in 2010, and celebrated at Celebration Weekend.

Presidents of Skidmore

 * Charles Henry Keyes (1912–1925)
 * Henry T. Moore (1925–1957)
 * Val H. Wilson (1957–1965)
 * Joseph C. Palamountain, Jr. (1965–1987)
 * David H. Porter (1987–1999)
 * Jamienne S. Studley (1999–2003)
 * Philip A. Glotzbach (2003–present)

Academic Departments and Programs
Nearly all departments offer only a B.A. A B.S. is given to those students majoring in Art (Studio), Dance, Dance-Theater, Education, Exercise Science, Business, Social Work, and Theater. The distinction rests in the number of hours of "non-liberal arts" courses allowed toward the 120 credit hours needed for graduation, 60 for a B.S. and 30 for a B.A. These "non-liberal arts"-designated courses are considered by the college to be of a professional nature.

Campus and facilities
Most of the buildings on Skidmore's 850 acre campus were constructed after 1960. Consequently, the grounds have a contemporary ambience that is enhanced by the numerous sculptures and murals that decorate the quads and other common areas.

The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery is the college's most prominent arts facility. In addition to the Tang, Skidmore has substantial undergraduate studio space as well as several smaller galleries. The Saisselin Art Building houses studios for animation, ceramics, communication design, drawing, fibers, metals, painting, photography, printmaking, and sculpture. Skidmore has a well-known music program housed in the new Arthur Zankel Music Center, which contains a large concert hall with state-of-the-art facilities.

Most humanities classes are held in one of four academic buildings: Palamountain, Tisch, Bolton, and Ladd. Harder Hall houses math and computer science; geology, chemistry, physics, and biology operate out of Dana Science Center. Almost every classroom at Skidmore is equipped with a computer and a projector, and many contain other audiovisual equipment such DVD players and slide projectors. The average class size is 16 (generally smaller in lab courses) and the typical student-to-teacher ratio is 11:1.

The Lucy Scribner Library, which houses approximately half a million volumes, is notable for both its function and beauty. Its five floors contain a large computer lab, approximately sixty open computers on the main floor, classrooms, private offices for seniors who are working on theses, and many areas for individual and group study. A substantial collection of rare books is kept in the third floor Pohndorff Room. The third floor is home to a children's library which is used by Saratoga residents. Also present is the Help Desk where students can get help with their computers. A helpful service offered by the library is the inter-library loan; students can put in a request for a book found at another college and have it sent to Skidmore free of charge.

Skidmore maintains nine on-campus residence halls (Howe Hall, Jonsson Tower, Kimball Hall, McClellan Hall, Penfield Hall, Rounds Hall, Wait Hall, Wiecking Hall and Wilmarth Hall) and three on-campus apartment complexes (North Woods Village, Scribner Village (currently under construction), and the Hillside Houses).

Residence Hall rooms at Skidmore are quite large and the college usually appears on the Princeton Review's "Dorms Like Palaces" list. Most residence halls are arranged in suite style with 3 or 4 bedrooms sharing one common bathroom. The exception to this is Wiecking Hall which is Skidmore's only corridor-style building. Most suites are single sex. Gender-neutral housing is available in Wiecking Hall, the Scribner Village, HIllside, and North Woods apartments, and select suites during room selection.

The North Woods Apartments are available to juniors and seniors and can hold 380 people in 3- and 4-person apartments. The Scribner Village apartments are available to most students except incoming freshmen. They house from 4 to 7 people.

Built in 1986 as a student pub, Falstaff's is now a venue for student sponsored musical performances. Bands such as Fa Fa Fine, Los Elk, and many others have performed there.

Much of Skidmore's property is taken up by North Woods, a 530 acre forest that adjoins the academic campus and reaches up to the bottom of the Adirondack mountains. The woods contain extensive hiking trails that are open to the general public.

The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery
The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery was opened in 2000, and was designed by the architect Antoine Predock. Predock's striking, innovative design includes two major gallery wings (the Wachenheim Gallery and the Malloy Wing), two smaller galleries (the State Farm Mezzanine and the Winter Gallery), digitally equipped classrooms, and several event spaces. The Tang is nationally known for both its architecture and its holdings, and its excellence has been recognized by the New York Times, Art in America, and Architectural Digest, among other publications.

The Tang has a private collection of over 5,000 works, including pieces by Rembrandt van Rijn, Albrecht Dürer, Francisco de Goya, William Hogarth, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Garry Winogrand, W. Eugene Smith, Eugène Atget, Dorothy Dehner, David Smith, Nayland Blake, and Nan Goldin. The museum also maintains extensive collections of art from Africa, South Asia, China, and the Americas.

An ambitious program of relevant, scholarly exhibitions is perhaps the Tang's greatest draw. Artists who have shown at the Tang include Kara Walker, Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler, Trisha Brown, and Richard Pettibone. Among other recent exhibitions are "Brushing the Present: Contemporary Academy Painting from China", "From Pop to Now: Selections from the Sonnabend Collection", "The World According to the Newest and Most Exact Observations: Mapping Art and Science", "Work: Shaker Design and Recent Art", and "Molecules that Matter".

The Tang is an educational center as well as a museum. Skidmore classes regularly meet in the galleries and classrooms, and groups from other schools visit to view exhibits, hear lectures, watch powerpoint presentations, and participate in workshops. Tours, demonstrations, and other events are generally open to the general public. In addition to visual arts exhibitions, the Tang often hosts plays, musical performances, and dance recitals.

Arthur Zankel Music Center
Because of a record-breaking donation made by the estate of Arthur Zankel, Skidmore received $46 million, a portion of which was used as a lead gift to make the state-of-the-art Arthur Zankel Music Center. Designed by Ewing Cole, the building has won awards even before it was built. Most notably, it is lauded for its environmentally friendly nature. For example, rain water is collected on the roof and turned into usable water in restrooms.

Janet Kinghorn Bernhard Theater
Janet Kinghorn Bernhard '26, while a senior at Skidmore, became the first editor of the Skidmore News. In the 1960s, she and her husband, Arnold, (a Skidmore trustee) committed themselves to building a theater on the new campus. They were both present in 1987 to see their long-awaited dream come true, at the dedication of the Janet Kinghorn Bernhard Theater. The facility has a main theater, with 300 seats, that is the site of most major productions, as well as a convertible black-box space. The main theater is also the home of the annual National College Comedy Festival. the Janet Kinghorn Bernhard Theater was named the #16 Best College Theater by the Princeton Review.

Dining facilities
A new dining hall was opened in Fall 2006 with futuristic architecture and a new kitchen which has greatly improved food quality. The new dining hall offers a variety of food selections including 7 food sections; The Global Café (foods from around the world), Semolina (pasta), Emily's Garden (salad bar and Vegan options), The Diner (more typical college foods), The Corner Deli (custom made sandwiches and wraps), Bake Shop, and Supremo's (pizza). The Pizza section has a brand new wood burning oven that is warm and earthy, contrasting with the rest of the dining hall's modern design. Also available is a "do-it-yourself" station where patrons can use items such as a juicer, a large griddle and waffle machines.

Campus Plan
Lo-Yi Chan, architect and campus planner, and apprentice of famous architect I M Pei has created Skidmore's next major Campus Plan. The expansion of the campus will provide Skidmore with the growth desired to join the ranks of top academic institutions in the years to come.

Student Government Association
The Skidmore College Student Government Association (SGA) is the governing body of the roughly 100 student-run clubs and organizations on campus. In addition to being the official liaison between students and the administration, the Skidmore SGA advocates for college policies that benefit the short - and long-term - interests of the student body. The primary functioning and operation of the SGA is done by an Executive Committee composed of the SGA President, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Vice President for Budget and FInance, Vice President for Residential Affairs, Vice President for Clubs and Organisations, Vice President for Communication and Outreach, Vice President for Diversity Affairs and the Senior Class President. The Student Senate, made up of over 35 elected leaders is the largest and final body in all matters. The Class Council, made up of class officers, and the Inter-Hall Board, made up of Hall Presidents and Vice Presidents, are primarily responsible for on-campus programming. SGA is also includes countless other individual students appointed to campus policy committees and adjudicatory bodies.

Salmagundi
Salmagundi is a quarterly journal that focuses on the humanities and social sciences. Founded by Robert Boyers, a long-time faculty member in the English department, it has been published at Skidmore since 1969 and now has an international subscriber base of several thousand readers.

Each issue generally includes poetry, fiction, interviews, and essays. Salmagundi's editors often devote large sections of an issue to a timely special subject. Recent theme issues include "The Culture of the Museum", "Nigerian Mathematics", "Homosexuality", "Art and Ethics", "The Culture Industry", "Kitsch", and "FemIcons."

Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee, Tzvetan Todorov, George Steiner, Orlando Patterson, Norman Manea, Christopher Hitchens, Seamus Heaney, Mary Gordon, Susan Sontag, Benjamin Barber, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Howard, Carolyn Forche, Martin Jay, and David Rieff are among the writers who have contributed to Salmagundi. Regular columnists include Benjamin Barber, Tzvetan Todorov, Martin Jay, Charles Molesworth, Marilynne Robinson, Carolyn Forché, and Mario Vargas Llosa.

The Skidmore News
The Skidmore News is the college's official student-run newspaper. Its staff is composed entirely of students, and it is published on a weekly basis during the academic year. In 2002, the Associated Collegiate Press awarded the newspaper first place for a four-year college weekly for special coverage of the community reaction to the September 11 attacks.

SkidTV
SkidTV is the college's official student run closed-circuit television station. The club is dedicated to promoting top quality programming while covering events on campus and in the surrounding area.

WSPN
WSPN 91.1 FM is Skidmore's radio station. It is administered by a board of directors composed entirely of undergraduates. Students, college employees, and residents of the local community are eligible to host shows, but they must apply to the board in order to win timeslots. Competition for high-profile slots is fierce.

WSPN's staff strives to create a cutting-edge mix of musical programming and talk shows. Although it is a small station with a small broadcast area, it has built up a reputation for innovative programming. The Princeton Review consistently ranks it among the nation's top college radio stations, and its internet broadcast reaches listeners throughout the country.

Skidmore Unofficial
Skidmore Unofficial is a popular on-campus news and humor blog, documenting undergraduate life from an alternative perspective. It is completely student-run and unaffiliated with the administration.

National College Comedy Festival
The National College Comedy Festival is an annual not-for-profit festival of student sketch and improvisational comedy that takes place each winter on campus. The festival, which first was held in February 1990, includes professional workshops.

Among the colleges and universities that regularly participate are Bard, Bates, Brandeis, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Emerson, George Washington, Haverford & Bryn Mawr, Kenyon, Manhattan, Marist, NYU, Oaksterdam University, School of Visual Arts, Skidmore, SUNY Binghamton, Swarthmore, Tufts, University of Arizona, University of Maryland, University of Southern California, USC, Vassar, Wesleyan, William & Mary, and Yale.

A Cappella
Skidmore currently has 5 a cappella groups: 1 all male, 2 co-ed, and 2 female. The Sonneteers, the first of the all female groups, are Skidmore's first and oldest a cappella group—they celebrated their 60th anniversary in 2007. The Bandersnatchers are the only all male a cappella group on campus. The Dynamics (Dynos) are Skidmore's oldest co-ed a cappella group (founded in 1995). The Drastic Measures (Drastics) are the newest co-ed a cappella group and are Skidmore's only charity a cappella group. The Accents are the final female a cappella group. All groups perform on and off campus throughout the semester, holding auditions at the beginning of each semester and concluding each semester with a "Jam". In addition to the A Cappella groups, Lift Every Voice, Skidmore's Gospel Choir was established in 2008 and chartered in 2009 as an official club. The Treblemakers, chartered in 2010, is the college's first and only all-inclusive A Cappella group.

Sustainability
Skidmore's Strategic Plan reflects the college's commitment to sustainability and includes a pledge to deepen connections with the local community, emphasize planning for sustainable operation, and reduce the college's environmental footprint. Three of Skidmore's buildings have geothermal heating and cooling systems, and the college has recently hired a sustainability coordinator to assist with efforts to "green" the campus. Skidmore received a grade of "B" on the Sustainable Endowment Institute's "College Sustainability Report Card 2010." Transportation planning and sustainable investment priorities helped the college to earn this relatively high mark.

Alcohol
Skidmore's main campus residential halls are substance free, however Scribner Village and the Northwoods Apartments – upperclassmen housing – are not substance free and those who are of legal age may consume and keep alcohol in their residence.

Athletics
Skidmore's Athletic Department currently funds and supports 19 Varsity teams ranging from Basketball to Riding, Rowing to Ice Hockey. The intercollegiate athletics program offered by Skidmore College is considered to be one of the nation's top sports opportunities for student-athletes. In 2003–2004, players from twelve Thoroughbred teams qualified for regional or national team and individual honors, and more than 95 Skidmore athletes earned league honors. Currently lead by Athletic Director is Gail Cummings-Danson Skidmore is a member of the Liberty League and run out of the recently dedicated Williamson Sports Center.

In 1998 the Women's Tennis Team won the Division III National Title and have been ranked in the Division III top 25 and competed in the NCAA Tournament since 2006. In 2005 the Skidmore Men's Baseball and Lacrosse teams won their conference championships and appeared for the first time in the NCAA Tournament. In 2008 the Women's Crew team was invited to the Eastern Collegiate Athletics Conference in Massachusetts and the Women's Varsity Eight finished the season ranked 10th in the nation. The women's Field Hockey team are four time consecutive Liberty League Champions (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011), appeared in the Division III Final Four in 2010, as well as in the NCAA tournament 12 times.

Campus Safety
The Department of Campus Safety is staffed by 17 full-time and 12 part-time professionals who are all state certified security guards. The Director and Associate Director have over 45 years of combined experience in law enforcement and came to Skidmore College after successful careers with the New York State Police.

Each year, members of the department receive several hours of training from both within the department and from outside sources in the areas of law enforcement, first aid, CPR, resolution conflict, diversity and investigative techniques. Additionally, members are sent to outside training programs such as RAD (Rape Aggression Defense), the New York State Police Sex Offense Seminar, cyber crime investigations and several other programs that keep our staff informed of the latest issues that confront college campuses. We have developed excellent working relations with local, county and state law enforcement agencies and other service providers in Saratoga County to improve the quality of safety on our campus.

Graduates

 * Actor Jon Bernthal, most notably from The Walking Dead (Class of 1999)
 * Sociology Professor Benjamin Bolger (MA 2007)
 * New York State Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno (Class of 1952)
 * Cynthia Carroll, CEO of Anglo American PLC (Class of 1978)
 * Jennie Cave, first woman mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut (Class of 1923)
 * Journalist Arwa Damon (Class of 1999)
 * Musician Julia Nunes (Class of 2011)
 * Members of Ratatat (Class of 2001)
 * Paranormal Activity star Micah Sloat (Class of 2004)
 * Lobbyist Anne Wexler (Class of 1951)
 * Actor Michael Zegen, most notably in Rescue Me

Attendees

 * Actress Lake Bell
 * Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream
 * Former Miss America Tawny Godin
 * Author Patrick Maher

Faculty

 * Sheldon Solomon, Professor of Psychology