Dr. Scrimshaw Delivers Inaugural Speech

On October 23, 2009, Dr. Susan C. Scrimshaw delivered her inaugural address, as she was installed as The Sage Colleges’ ninth president.

It is an honor and a privilege to be standing here today as the ninth president of The Sage Colleges. I want to thank everyone here and the many of you who are listening today for your support of the Sage Colleges, and of our work. I want to thank our elected officials who are here for your support of our mutual goals for our communities.

Thank you, Mayor Jerry Jennings of Albany, Mayor Harry Tutunjian ofTroy, and Rensselaer County Executive Kathy Jimino. I would like to acknowledge the support of The Sage Colleges Board of Trustees, and the Deans, faculty, staff and students of The Sage Colleges. A very special thank you to the members of the President’s cabinet, who have worked tirelessly to make Sage successful.

I also want to take a moment to acknowledge my family. Both of my grandfathers were college professors and my grandmothers also held advanced degrees. They are represented here today by my parents, Nevin and Mary Scrimshaw, also both scientists and academics, who encouraged me in thinking like a scientist and a scholar from the very early days of my childhood in Guatemala. Appropriate to the origins of The Sage Colleges in Russell Sage College for women, there are four generations of women in my family here today: I am joined by my mother, an anthropologist, my daughter, an artist, and my granddaughter, Elise, who celebrates her first birthday today (no pressure, Elise). Finally, I want to acknowledge my husband, Allan Stern. I could not lead Sage without Allan’s support and partnership.

The history of the Sage colleges begins with the story of women’s pursuit of education. Interestingly three educational institutions in Troy are linked by this history. We begin with the story of Emma Willard, who first established an educational seminary for women at her home in Middlebury, Vermont in 1814. She had hoped that the young women in her school would be able to sit in on classes at Middlebury College, but this was forbidden. She relocated her school to Waterford, New York and in 1821 moved it to Troy after prominent citizens of Troy actively pursued bringing the school to their town. The Troy Council raised $4,000 for a building, which was supplemented by $5,000 from private citizens.

I find it quite remarkable that the officials and citizens of Troy believed so firmly in the education of women that they would take these steps to create a women’s school in their community. One man, Amos Eaton of Williams College, was the sole college professor who supported Emma Willard in her quest to establish the school that became the Troy Female Seminary. He taught at the Female Seminary, and advised Emma Willard regarding the curriculum for her school. He went on in 1824 to co-found the school in Troy that became the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Thus, Amos Eaton had an important role in the creation of three educational institutions in Troy.

In 1847, Margaret Olivia Slocum graduated from the Troy Female Seminary, where she was a great admirer of Emma Willard. For the next 22 years, she lived frugally as a teacher. In 1869 she married Russell Sage, then one of the wealthiest men in America. It was not easy to persuade Mr. Sage to part with any of his money, but one important exception for the future of Russell Sage College was his gift of Sage Hall in 1895 to the Troy Female Seminary, which by then had been named the Emma Willard School. He took great interest in this building, and became personally involved with the architectural and construction details.

He died 11 years after it was finished, and Mrs. Sage began the final 12 years of her life during which she gave away the millions he had left her. In 1910, she funded a splendid new campus for the Emma Willard School, but then began to worry about what would happen to the former school buildings abandoned in downtown Troy, particularly Sage Hall, which had meant so much to her husband. She asked the headmistress of the Emma Willard School, Miss Eliza Kellas, for advice on what to do with the buildings. Mrs. Sage wanted to ensure that the buildings, particularly Sage Hall, would continue to function to provide education. Miss Kellas suggested a college for women. Mrs. Sage agreed, on two conditions: One, that Miss Kellas agree to administer the new school, in addition to continuing her responsibilities at Emma Willard. Two, that Miss Kellas open the school, complete with students, in September of 1916, which at the time was only nine months away.

We are here today because Eliza Kellas achieved the nearly impossible. In nine months, she had the buildings prepared, recruited a faculty, developed a curriculum, and recruited 117 students from 14 states and two territories. Russell Sage College was launched. It is important to note that Russell Sage College was intended from the beginning to be “a college of the practical arts.” Its students were to study the liberal arts, but were to focus on acquiring professional skills that would allow them to have careers. Mrs. Sage never forgot her years as a teacher or the influence of the women’s suffrage movement in this region. She believed that women should be able to work and be independent. At the same time, she expected academic excellence.

The college thrived, and received many distinguished visitors during its first half-century. One of those was Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt – the wife of President Franklin Roosevelt — who received the first honorary degree awarded by the college, in 1929. Mrs. Roosevelt would later serve as a trustee from 1945 to 1948. Among the many noted writers and scholars who lectured at Russell Sage was the poet Robert Frost, who is buried in nearby Bennington. It is also noteworthy that the strong relationship between Troy and Russell Sage College continued. The Presbyterian church which once occupied this hall, now called Bush Hall, served as the college chapel, and as a lecture and performance hall as needed. It was finally purchased by the college in 1973 when the congregation built a new church. The original three buildings of Sage Hall, Gurley Hall and the Plum Building were quickly supplemented as citizens of Troy donated or willed their homes on First and Second Streets to the college, another indication of the strong support for education on the part of this community.

Sage began as an institution of higher education to provide educational opportunities for women, but then transformed into an institution that extends these opportunities to men, adult learners, and diverse populations. This began with adult education classes on the Troy campus in 1941. An evening division in Albany for both men and women was started in 1949. In 1957 the Sage Junior College of Albany was created and the evening division was eventually moved to a shared campus in Albany in the University Heights area. In the fall of 2002, the Junior College became a four-year college, Sage College of Albany.

As noted in the Robert Frost poem you heard in a musical setting a few minutes ago, “Two roads diverged”….Russell Sage College had some choices:

• a woman’s college?……a coed college?

• Troy?…….Albany?

Two roads diverged, and Russell Sage College took them both: A coed college in Albany and a woman’s college in Troy, each with a distinct personality.

In addition to being inspired by a New England poet, I am reminded of the words of that great Yankee philosopher, Yogi Berra, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

Well, we did.

Just as the people of Troy were involved in the founding of Russell Sage College, the Albany community, led by then Mayor Erastus Corning, was supportive of the founding of a junior college in Albany. Years later, when a four-year college was contemplated, another Albany mayor, Jerry Jennings, provided encouragement and support.

Graduate programs at Sage began in 1949 with a Masters degree in education and have now evolved to the point where graduate students comprise the largest single student body of The Sage Colleges. Next week, we will formally announce another step in the evolution of The Sage Colleges. We have restructured the Sage Graduate School around three key areas of strength and expertise to create the School of Education, School of Health Sciences, and School of Management. The newly formed schools capitalize on Sage’s leading professional degree and certificate programs at the post-baccalaureate, master’s, post-master’s, and doctorate levels. The schools will also support the bachelor’s programs at our two undergraduate colleges.

The past of the Sage colleges was rooted in a struggle to overcome the denial of education to one segment of our society, women, and later the desire to provide education to adults who had not had that opportunity previously, and to youth who would benefit from the nurturing environment of a junior college.

Sage was born in the cradle of the suffrage movement which emerged from this region of New York. Sage was born in the context of the abolitionist movement which thrived in this region and which was extremely active in the very building in which we are now gathered. Sage was born as a result of money earned in the early industrial age of this country. Sage was born out of the devotion of a small group of women and afew men who believed in education for women. Nearly a century later we begin a new chapter of the Sage colleges.

The Future of Sage

I chose the first Robert Frost poem we sang because Sage did in fact make an unusual choice when confronted with two paths. I chose the second Frost poem, “Choose Something like a Star” because it always made me think of science and of learning, but also because of the lines:

“It asks of us a certain height,

so when, at times the mob is swayed

to carry praise or blame too far,

we may choose something like a star

to stay our minds on,

and be staid.”

We are living in a time when it is easy to be swayed by the pressures of our financial environment, of our challenges to provide an affordable education to those who seek to learn, with our concern with the future of our physical environment, and our concern with the tremendous inequities in the world. It is all too easy to become distracted, even paralyzed by these concerns. Frost urges us to choose something like a star to stay our minds on, and for our academic world, I interpret this as the pursuit of excellence.

At the Sage Colleges our motto is

Esse Scrire Facere.

To be, to know, to do.

Today, I would like to propose three words based on our motto to guide the Sage colleges for this next stage in our development.

The first word is “excellent”

To be: Excellent in academics

The second is “relevant”

To know: Relevant skills for the 21st century

The third is “engaged”

To do: Engaged in our local and global communities

The strategic plan just completed by the Sage community and approved by the Board of Trustees in June of this year provides the blueprint for these goals. Together we will hone our academic programs in the continual pursuit of excellence. Together we will continue to develop innovative learning strategies which prepare students for the 21st century. Together we will provide educational opportunities for traditional college students and adult learners of diverse economic, social and ethnic and national groups. Together we will engage in contributing to our local and global communities as we educate students who will consider improving the lives of others a part of their life’s work.

To our elected officials and to the representatives of other colleges and learned societies who have joined us in celebrating today, we commit to partner with you in our common missions of education and of civic responsibility.

To be: Excellent in academics

To know: Relevant skills for the 21st century

To do: Engaged in our local and global communities

Excellent, Relevant, Engaged.

These concepts, based on our motto first created in 1916 will guide us through our hundredth anniversary in 2016 and beyond.

I chose the third song that you will hear in a few moments because it is a song about work that is more successful because it is done together. It also reflects the beauty and productivity of the area surrounding the capital region. It is a song about harvest and about community. Education is all about these things: working together, and producing the harvest which is knowledge, and is also graduates who are prepared to not only thrive in the world, but to make it a better place.

That is education. That is The Sage Colleges.

Thank you.

The Road not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

Choose Something Like a Star

O Star (the fairest one in sight),

We grant your loftiness the right

To some obscurity of cloud – It will not do to say of night,

Since dark is what brings out your light.

Some mystery becomes the proud.

But to be wholly taciturn In your reserve is not allowed.

Say something to us we can learn

By heart and when alone repeat. Say something!

And it says “I burn.”

But say with what degree of heat.

Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.

Use language we can comprehend.

Tell us what elements you blend.

It gives us strangely little aid,

But does tell something in the end.

And steadfast as Keats’ Eremite,

Not even stooping from its sphere,

It asks a little of us here.

It asks of us a certain height,

So when at times the mob is swayed

To carry praise or blame too far,

We may choose something like a star

To stay our minds on and be staid.

The Promise of Living

The promise of living

With hope and thanksgiving

Is born of our loving

Our friends and our labor.

The promise of growing

With faith and with knowing

Is born of our sharing

Our love with our neighbor.

The promise of loving

The promise of growing

Is born of our singing

In joy and thanksgiving.

For many a year I’ve know these fields

And know all the work that makes them yield.

Are you ready to lend a hand?

We’re ready to work, we’re ready to lend a hand.

By working together we’ll bring in the harvest,

the blessings of harvest.

We plow plant each row with seeds of grain,

And Providence sends us the sun and the rain.

By lending a arm

Bring out the blessings of harvest.

Give thanks there was sunshine,

Give thanks there was rain,

Give thanks we have hands

To deliver the grain.

O let us be joyful,

O let us be grateful to the Lord

For his blessing.

The promise of living

The promise of growing

The promise of ending

Is labor and sharing and loving.

Horace Everett