Gathering of Women's Colleges Worldwide

Smith, Mount Holyoke to Host June Conference on Unfinished Agenda of Women's
Education Worldwide

Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges, two of the most influential liberal arts
institutions for women in the United States, will host a meeting of presidents
and academic deans of leading colleges and universities from around the world
in order to discuss international issues and challenges in women's education,
as well as issues surrounding women's study of science.

The three-day gathering, "Women's Education Worldwide 2004: The Unfinished
Agenda," will run from Wednesday, June 2, to Friday, June 4, and will likely
be the first in an ongoing series of regular conferences by leaders of
international women's colleges and institutions with historical ties to
women's education. This year's program will be divided between the Mount
Holyoke and Smith campuses.

The conference will bring together heads of leading institutions from the
United States with their counterparts from Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle
East and Australia, representing nearly 30 schools. (Please see a list of
participating institutions below.) Both Smith and Mount Holyoke have
longstanding ties to the international educational community.

Two keynote speakers will address attendees and interested members of the
public. At 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, June 2, Amartya Sen will speak at Hooker
Auditorium, Mount Holyoke. A Nobel Prize-winning economist whose work has a
profound humanitarian dimension that recognizes that the betterment of society
is the ultimate duty of scholarship, Sen has a strong interest in women's
education and has written on the economic effects of educating women. Sen is
master of Trinity College, Cambridge, U.K., and Lamont University Professor
Emeritus at Harvard University. He has served as president of the Econometric
Society, the Indian Econometric Association, the American Economic Association
and the International Economic Association.

Sheila E. Widnall will be the keynote speaker on women and science and will
speak at 11 a.m. on Thursday, June 3, in Seelye 106 on the Smith campus.
Widnall is the Institute Professor and Professor of Aeronautics and
Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She has more
than 30 years of teaching and administrative experience at MIT and has also
served as secretary of the U.S. Air Force. She is internationally known for her
work in fluid dynamics and is the past recipient of the Living Legacy Award
from the Women's International Center.

Both keynote speeches are free, open to the public and fully accessible.

In preparation for the conference, Smith President Carol T. Christ and Mount
Holyoke President Joanne V. Creighton have asked their counterparts from around
the world to bring forward challenges confronting women's education
internationally:

"What does your educational institution aspire to do in educating women, and
what is it able to do?" Presidents Christ and Creighton wrote participants.
"For example, in the United States, women are proportionally underrepresented
in the advanced study of many sciences, particularly physical sciences and
engineering. Women's liberal arts colleges have often done better than their
coeducational counterparts in propelling graduates into these fields, yet
clearly there is room for systemic improvement. How can we advance this agenda?
More broadly, in what productive ways could we individually and jointly promote
what we are calling 'the great unfinished agenda': the education and
advancement of women in the world across ethnic, racial, age and socioeconomic
groups? How do we tackle an even more pressing issue and a much larger agenda,
that of social justice for women worldwide?"

The conference is anticipated to be a first step in building new avenues of
collaboration among participating institutions in addressing educational issues
facing women internationally.

For example, scholars and humanitarian organizations point toward a serious and
growing disparity among women in developed and developing nations, particularly
with regard to literacy. As University of Chicago Professor Martha Nussbaum
noted recently in the Winter 2004 issue of Liberal Education, "In about
one-third of the world's nations, fewer than 50 percent of women can even
read and write. … Public universities do far too little to recruit women from
deprived rural backgrounds and to give them the remedial training they often
need."

And, Sen has frequently written and spoken about the lasting consequences of
educational disparity on both women and men. "Why is it so important to close
the educational gaps and to remove the enormous disparities in educational
access, inclusion and achievement?" Sen asked in a speech to the Commonwealth
Education Conference in Edinburgh last year. "One reason, among others, is
the importance of this for making the world more secure as well as more fair.
H.G. Wells was not exaggerating when he said, in his 'Outline of History':
'Human history becomes more and more a race between education and
catastrophe.' If we continue to leave vast sections of the people of the
world outside the orbit of education, we make the world not only less just, but
also less secure."

As members of the historic Seven Sisters, the premier American liberal arts
colleges for women, Mount Holyoke and Smith are well suited to facilitate
discussion on these key issues. Since the 19th century, Smith and Mount
Holyoke, friendly rivals facing each other across the Connecticut River in
western Massachusetts, have exerted great influence on women's advancement in
education, politics and society. Both have well-established study abroad
programs and significant numbers of international students.

With a student body that is 16 percent international and includes students from
more than 75 countries, Mount Holyoke leads top-ranked liberal arts
institutions in the nation in terms of percentage of international students.

Smith's student body is 7 percent international and includes students from
more than 60 countries. Smith was among the first American colleges and
universities to establish a commitment to study abroad. More than half of Smith
students study abroad during their undergraduate careers, most for a full year.


About the sponsors:

Founded in 1837 by Mary Lyon, Mount Holyoke College is one of the nation's
finest liberal arts colleges. Rigorous academics and an internationally diverse
student body create an environment that prepares women to become leaders in an
increasingly complex world. The country's oldest institution of higher
education for women, Mount Holyoke has had a formative role in the founding of
scores of schools and colleges across the U.S. and throughout the world. Today
it enrolls approximately 2,100 students from all 50 United States and more than
80 countries. Emphasizing the importance of science education throughout its
history, the college has recently completed a unified science center and an
expansion of its music, art and student center facilities. It is located in
South Hadley, Mass.

Smith College is located in Northampton, Mass., approximately two hours west of
Boston and 10 miles northwest of Mount Holyoke College. Founded in 1871 by
Sophia Smith of Hatfield, Mass., it is today the largest liberal arts college
for women in the United States, with more than 2,800 students from throughout
the United States and 60 countries around the world. Building on its
longstanding tradition of academic excellence, the college in recent years has
added an engineering program and a program in landscape studies, as well as
completed an extensive renovation and expansion of its renowned Museum of Art.

Schools to be represented at the June conference:

AFRICA
Kiriri Women's University of Science and Technology, Kenya
Ahfad University, Sudan

ASIA
Kobe Women's College, Japan
Ochanomizu University, Japan
Tokyo Women's College, Japan
Ewha Women's University, Korea
Sookmyung Women's University, Korea

AUSTRALIA
Women's College, University of Queensland
Women's College, University of Sydney

EUROPE
EPF École d'Ingenieurs, France
University of Bremen, Germany
Collegio Nuovo, Italy
Lucy Cavendish College, U.K.
New Hall College, U.K.

MIDDLE EAST
Dubai College, Dubai
Effat College, Saudi Arabia

NORTH AMERICA
Brescia University College, Ontario, Canada

Agnes Scott College
Barnard College
Bay Path College
Bennett College
Bryn Mawr College
Mills College
Mount Holyoke College
Scripps College
Smith College
Saint Mary-of-the-Woods
Spelman College
Wellesley College
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