815 North Broadway
Saratoga Springs,
New York, 12866
SKIDMORE PHONE
518-580-5000
Skidmore
College Today
Mission
The principal mission of Skidmore College is the education of
predominantly full-time undergraduates, a diverse population
of talented students who are eager to engage actively in the
learning process. The college seeks to prepare liberally educated
graduates to continue their quest for knowledge and to make
the choices required of informed, responsible citizens. Skidmore
faculty and staff create a challenging yet supportive environment
that cultivates students’ intellectual and personal excellence,
encouraging them to expand their expectations of themselves
while they enrich their academic understanding.
In keeping with the college’s
founding principle of linking theoretical with applied learning,
the Skidmore curriculum balances a commitment to the liberal
arts and sciences with preparation for professions, careers,
and community leadership. Education in the classroom, laboratory,
and studio is enhanced by cocurricular and field experience
opportunities of broad scope.
Underpinning the entire enterprise
are faculty members’ scholarly and creative interests,
which inform their teaching and contribute, in the largest
sense, to the advancement of learning.
The college also embraces its
responsibility as an educational and cultural resource for
alumni and for a host of nontraditional student populations,
and for providing educational leadership in the Capital District
and beyond.
As a result of a commitment to the principles
affirmed in the Mission Statement cited above, faculty and
students are engaged in a variety of initiatives focused on
collecting information about both teaching and student learning.
Student work is periodically collected and used anonymously
for assessment purposes. Information gathered from reviews
of student work helps faculty members determine if their pedagogical
methods are effective, if students are learning what is expected,
and what improvements might be considered in future classes.
Data gathered are aggregated and used, therefore, to improve
the Skidmore experience for both students and faculty.
The
Setting
A lively city combining historical
charm with modern culture and a cosmopolitan atmosphere, Saratoga
Springs is a popular place among Skidmore students year round.
Ceded to the Dutch by the Indians in 1694, the city takes
its name from the Indian “Saraghtoga” (place of
swift water). Its reputation as one of the world’s leading
spas grew steadily through the nineteenth century, as it increasingly
became known as the home of the nation’s oldest thoroughbred
racetrack and social center for elite society.
Today Saratoga is best known as a resort,
cultural, convention, and entertainment center revolving around
horse racing, outdoor recreation, classical and popular music,
dance, and theater. The city is well known for its restored
Victorian mansions, which attract students of art and architecture.
The Saratoga Spa State Park, with its springs and mineral
waters, is of more than recreational interest to biology students,
and the wealth of rock formations in the region brings geologists
from around the world. The city’s convention facility
brings conferences and exhibitions from across the state and
nation.
With the growth over the past two decades
of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the city has greatly
increased its offerings as an important cultural center. Located
in the state park, SPAC is the summer home of the New York
City Ballet and the Philadelphia Orchestra, as well as the
venue for top rock and jazz musicians. Distinguished theater
companies and chamber music groups perform in SPAC’s
Little Theater.
Saratoga Springs is also known for the
variety of its revitalized downtown area—a collection
of shops, restaurants, galleries, and coffeehouses with an
appeal to people of virtually all interests. In 1996 the city
was honored with a “Great American Main Street Award”
by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The area’s historical tradition includes
the Saratoga Battlefield, scene of the pivotal 1777 clash
between the Colonial and British armies that led directly
to the end of the American Revolution. Dozens of landmarks
celebrate the area’s role in American history.
The Saratoga Historical Society and Walworth
Museums, housed in the Canfield Casino in Congress Park, feature
exhibits and period rooms highlighting the city’s fascinating
past.
The Campus
Set in what was at the turn of the
century a beautiful park of summer residences, Skidmore’s
campus encompasses more than 650 acres of wooded land at the
northwest edge of Saratoga Springs. Land for the campus—now
named the Jonsson Campus—was given to Skidmore College
by Trustee J. Erik Jonsson and his wife, Margaret, in the
early 1960s, when it became apparent that Skidmore was outgrowing
its original Scribner Campus in downtown Saratoga Springs.
Since 1964, when ground was broken for the first new structure
on the Jonsson Campus, forty-nine buildings have been constructed
on this site. While strikingly contemporary in architectural
style, the campus buildings honor human scale and reflect
Skidmore’s Victorian heritage in numerous aesthetic details.
Among the college’s more recent construction
projects is the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art
Gallery, which opened in fall 2000, and the renovation and
expansion of Case College Center.
Carefully planned to preserve the natural
beauty of the setting, the campus was designed to provide
for both students and teachers a feeling of freedom and wide
horizon. From the covered walkways uniting the residential,
academic, and social centers on campus, the prevailing views
are to the mountains, woods, and fields, and into the center
campus “green.”
The Jonsson Campus maintains the advantages
of a small college where students and teachers meet often
and informally and where academic resources are readily at
hand.
The
Faculty
Skidmore’s size and its student-faculty
ratio are two of the keys to creating an academic environment
that fosters close associations and the exchange of ideas
among faculty and students. About 2,200 full-time students
bring an unusually wide range of academic and cultural experiences
to the campus, and a student-faculty ratio of 11:1 assures
each student the chance for the close faculty attention that
enhances the liberal arts experience.
Teaching, at Skidmore, is not merely the
imparting of knowledge. It is the key to helping students
develop their abilities, talents, and values; to enriching
them as human beings; to integrating scholarship with career
goals; and to preparing them for lives of productive contribution
to society and of continuous study and inquiry. The abilities
to think and analyze clearly, to express oneself effectively
through speaking and writing, to discern and value excellence,
and to serve society are the hallmarks of a Skidmore education.
The members of the Skidmore faculty are
well known for the range of education, research, and experience
they bring to the classroom. Though they are prolific in their
writing, productive in their research, and outstanding in
their artistic endeavors, their emphasis is always on teaching,
on translating that excellence of experience into meaningful
learning for their students.
Numbering 189 full-time faculty, Skidmore’s teaching
faculty represent some of the top graduate schools in the
nation and the world. Over 93 percent of the Skidmore faculty
hold the Ph.D. or the highest degree in their field.
Beyond their academic interests, the Skidmore
faculty are known for taking a personal interest in their
students, offering the added word of encouragement, the extra
time outside the classroom, or the open mind for questions—all
of which contribute to the extra incentive a student needs.
These attitudes have helped create a campus known for its
warmth and sense of community.
The
Academic Program
Like other small, highly selective
liberal arts colleges, Skidmore is firmly committed to providing
men and women with a superior education in the humanities,
sciences, and social sciences. What sets Skidmore apart is
its integration of the liberal arts with opportunities for
intensive study in more career-specific fields such as the
fine and performing arts, business, education, and social
work. This distinctive blend of the theoretical and the practical
makes Skidmore uniquely responsive to both student needs and
those of the increasingly interdependent world we live in.
Skidmore offers more than sixty degree
programs, including majors in both traditional liberal arts
disciplines and preprofessional areas. The curriculum’s
flexibility allows students to major in one field and minor
in another (an English major with a business minor, for example),
pursue an interdepartmental major combining two disciplines,
or design self-determined majors.
Facility with contemporary digital technologies
and with the retrieval and interpretation of information is
fostered through a series of courses that incorporate computer
resources in the learning process and through special workshops.
The internship program complements this
flexibility through “exploratory” and “professional”
learning opportunities off campus. Students are encouraged
to test their skills through internships in government, industry,
communications, and nonprofit organizations at the local,
state, and national levels. Many students intern with alumni,
who are generous with their time and support of the internship
program.
Beyond the Skidmore campus, students may
take advantage of courses offered at other Capital District
colleges through the Hudson-Mohawk Association of Colleges
and Universities, which includes such institutions as Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, Union College, and the State University
of New York at Albany. Cooperative programs include one in
engineering with the Thayer School at Dartmouth College; a
Washington Semester coordinated through American University;
a semester at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole;
an ecosystems semester at Biosphere 2 in Arizona; M.B.A. programs
with Clarkson University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;
and an M.A.T. affiliation with Union College.
The Office of International Programs organizes
a wide range of opportunities abroad for students and faculty.
The office provides administrative oversight for Skidmore’s
Paris, London, and Madrid programs and provides support to
other Skidmore programs abroad and Skidmore affiliations in
many regions of the world.
The college operates under a semester calendar
with fifteen-week fall and spring semesters. Skidmore’s
summer program includes two five-week academic sessions and
other study options.
