Category Archives: Colleges

New England colleges and universities

Haverford College

Colleges

Small size, high quality.

For an alphabetical index of the New England College series of pieces, click here.

The extended hiatus for this blog was caused by the author’s dedication to helping his son with preparation for the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). This shakedown scheme sees hundreds of thousands of students studying millions of hours annually for a test which addresses very little taught in high school. Comprising 96 English and 58 Math questions, all but 13 multiple choice with severe time limits, it’s the key to getting an offer from a good college.

With Winston’s SAT polished off last Saturday, Tuesday found us at beautiful Haverford College just northwest of Philadelphia. The pristine setting of this Little Ivy comprises an arboretum of 216 acres, open to all. The school was founded by Quakers in 1833 and admits just 1350 undergraduates. That’s a fraction of that of the Big 8 Ivies yet there are no concessions to academic standards, with just eight students per faculty member. There are no teachers’ assistants instructing classes – you get the real thing for your tuition dollar. 5 Nobel laureates, 6 Pulitzer Prize winners, 20 Rhodes and 104 Fulbright scholars hail from Haverford, where the most popular majors are English Literature, Biology and Economics. All students live on campus, testifying to the tightly knit undergraduate body …. and the less than impressive Philadelphia surroundings.



Our tour begins. WInston is wearing the hat.


Campus housing may not look great but it’s clean and modern inside. All dorms are co-ed.


Arboretum abstract.


Study areas did not look like this when I was a kid.


Our guide is a philosophy Junior.


Arboretum setting.


Beautiful interior of the Marion E. Koshland Integrated Natural Sciences Center.


Classic northeastern architecture. The campus is in superb repair throughout.


Exquisite balustrade inside Founders’ Hall.


Quaker roots. Haverford is now a secular school – alumni include former Goldman Sachs co-chair John Whitehead.


As befits a truly civilized school, Haverford students play cricket.


An academic setting – no Greek life, no wild parties. You are here to learn.


In gorgeous Founders’ Hall. Note the Chippendale pediment.


The dining hall – sushi, vegetarian, Kosher and Halal options are all available.


Another part of the arboretum setting.


The Memorial Chapel.


The same stone is used throughout, making for an integrated whole.


Dogs – and non-students – are welcome to enjoy the grounds.


In the woodworking shop. I have seen better dovetail joints!


Flowers galore.


No academic featherbed, this.


James House is a non-curricular space for students to express their artistic drive.


Attending the informational session – conducted by a Swarthmore grad!


Haverford is well endowed at $522 million or $385,000 a student. A frequent shuttle service connects students with Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore. You can take your major at these schools while a student at Haverford, which speaks to leverage of the brainpower of three academic exemplars. Unsurprisingly, admission requirements are similar for all three.

Connecticut College

Colleges

Architectural unity in a fine setting.


Connecticut College is close to Boston and New York.

For an alphabetical index of the New England College series of pieces, click here.

When Wesleyan University decided to ban women (!) from its campus in 1909, the business opportunity was not lost on Connecticut College, some 40 minutes east in Connecticut which opened its doors in 1911, to women only. It’s now co-ed, as is Wesleyan and educates just 1800 undergraduate students, with its strengths being chemistry, biology, medicine and economics. Many graduates go on to NYU to take a masters in business.

As I was at my son’s school in central Massachusetts for Fall Family Days, we made the pilgrimage to Connecticut College some 120 miles and 2 hours south during the long weekend. While Winston is increasingly focused on an urban or city setting for college after four years in remote Northfield Mount Hermon in the Berkshires, CC’s setting near the small, tired working class town of New London does not disqualify it, as excellent rail services see to it that both New York and Boston are some 90 minutes distant.

The architecture, with Connecticut River granite used throughout, is quite splendid here with only two modern design eyesores – the Library and Arts buildings. The stone used, however, is the same. In this regard the campus is very reminiscent of far more remote Middlebury, with CC distinguished by a quite splendid selection of modern sculptures dotted throughout the compact and beautifully ordered grounds, resplendent with not one but two perfect soccer pitches. Further, even the old buildings see their infrastructure modernized and the overall effect is much of a muchness. Lovely.



Our charming guide Shelby, a sophomore, briefs the tour group on a crisp autumn day.
Winston at right, sporting NMH apparel.


The gingerbread admissions building. It matches nothing but is quite charming.


The Arts building. Oh! dear.


A hint of Brutalism in the performing arts building, but not too bad.


The concert hall inside the performing arts building.


Winston in front of Louise Nevelson’s magnificent Untitled piece, 1976-86.


Antoine Poncet’s Sensoraya, 1969.


Sasson Soffer’s Northern Memory & Southern Memory, 1986.


It may only be late October but the leaves are all gone here.


Professional greenhouse.


Following Wesleyan’s lead, CC includes an observatory.


Synergy. Francis G. Pratt, 1994


William McCloy’s whimsically named ‘The Dangers and Pleasures of Co-Education’, 1968


While the Shain Library’s exterior has a face only a mother could love,
the four stories of books, including a lovely oriental quiet
space, are really something.


Putto 4 over 4, v2, by Michael Rees, 2006. A most dynamic piece.


CC alumni include Joan Rivers, Judge Kimba Wood, Susan Saint James, Estelle Parsons and Nan Kempner.

Panny GX7, 12-35mm pro zoom.

The Mead Art Museum

Colleges

At Amherst College.

For an alphabetical index of the New England College series of pieces, click here.

Unlike its public school neighbor across the road – U Mass Amherst with some 30,000 students – Amherst College is small at 2,000 and private. It is rivaled only by Colgate for the beauty of its setting.

Like many of the great private colleges in New England, Amherst boasts a superb art collection, most pieces donated by successful alumni. The small display space in Amherst’s Mead Art Museum can house maybe 200 items, and does not do the collection of 8,000 pieces justice.

As Amherst College is but 30 minutes south of Northfield Mount Hermon, my son’s prep school, I always try to drop by when in Massachusetts to check out their latest exhibition.



The entrance to the Museum, with Stearns Steeple at left. The steeple is mercifully
the last remnant of the College’s religious origins. Religion should have no rôle in education.


The entrance piece for the ‘Time is Everything’ exhibition.


Harold Edgerton’s famous 1964 image from his MIT days shows a bullet passing through an apple.
When a student at University College, London in 1976 I used his exact technique to determine
the speed of high speed grit particles impacting and eroding polymers, the subject of my senior dissertation.
It’s quite likely I used a stroboscope from the same manufacturer, America’s Perkin-Elmer.


Time has many manifestations. This magnificent grandfather clock by Isaac Gere dates form the 1794/95.


The Mead’s meeting room is beyond spectacular.


Another view of the ‘Time’ exhibition.


“Fragmented Identities: The Gendered Roles of Women in Art Through the Ages” is a small side show.
The painting at left with the idealized image of the young woman is by William-Adolphe
Bouguereau (‘Boo-zhou-row’), a 19th century academic painter much beloved by the Victorians whose
awfulness is now enjoying a serious renaissance for reasons lost on me.


The Mead changes its exhibits about every semester and is always worth a visit. As for Amherst College, it ranks up there with Williams, also in MA, for academic excellence. Many aver it’s as good as or better than anything the eight Ivy League schools (Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth and Penn) offer. The beauty of the setting alone is worth a few points on your ACT score.

Panny GX7, 12-35mm pro zoom.

MIT

Colleges, Photographs

Where Slide Rules rule.

Traveling home for Spring Break my son’s school bus got him as far as Logan Airport in Boston, and in Boston he remains, for now. Brutal weather and high winds saw to it that all flights from BOS were cancelled, and can you wonder when you contemplate the sheer idiocy of the location? Quarterly flooding? You bet. High winds? Guaranteed.


Boston Logan. A third world airport in the greatest nation on earth.

I have flown in and out of this miserable airport many times and my ‘on time’ experience comprises maybe 10% of those occasions. As does my son’s.

Still, not all is bad as our good friend Santo, who lives in nearby Lexington, offered to put Winston up for the night while we rebooked flights a day later. And what with Lexington being but 10 miles from the center of the engineering world, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Winnie and Santo decamped to MIT to check out the museum.

And just think. Without MIT we would all be speaking German, would not have walked on the moon and there would be no microprocessors or iPhones. Without a shadow of a doubt this is the premier engineering school in the world.

One pleasant outcome of their visit was a host of images Santo sent over and one in particular caught my imagination.

Santo used a Samsung SM-G930U cell phone to make the image which I slightly enhanced in Lightroom.

The two giant slide rules (how did they do that?) took me back to my days as an engineering student. At that time the only calculating device permitted in the exam room was the slide rule. A couple of rich kids had the fancy American Texas Instruments calculators but the British sense of fairness and desire for level playing fields (unless you were in one of their colonies) prohibited these magical devices at exam time. Appropriately, two of TI’s four founders were MIT men.

The two slide rules in the above image are a Pickett, top and a Keuffel and Esser. The Pickett is distinguished by its all metal construction, making it lighter and more durable, so much so that it was Buzz Aldrin’s tool of choice on the Apollo 11 mission which saw men first walk on the moon. Yup, MIT got us to the moon but the microprocessor had yet to be invented.

Slide rules are beautiful things and you can pick up normal sized versions of either of the above on eBay for pennies. My Faber Castell remains on display at home:

Thank you, Santo, for bringing back those pleasant memories when my net worth consisted of one Leica and three lenses along with one change of clothes! I rather imagine my son will have an easier time of it.


Winston at the unromantically named ‘Building 10’and Great Dome, on Killian Court, MIT.

Harvard University

Colleges

A spring visit.

For an alphabetical index of the New England College series of pieces, click here.

My son and I visited Harvard University in the winter of 2015 when he was beginning to look at New England prep schools. Because the size and significance of Harvard are so overwhelming, we opted for the guided tour on this, our first visit, so as to get a good introduction. It seems appropriate that this somewhat belated piece on the best educational institution in the world should run on the most important day in American history.

The school is very large as private schools go, with a heavy focus on research. The 6,700 undergraduates are greatly outnumbered by 14,500 postgraduates.



The school is totally integrated into the city of Boston. The local subway is paid by the University for slowing down as it passes, to avoid damage to the ancient buildings.


The best way to get an introduction.


Our enthusiastic guide was a mechanical engineering Junior.


Harvard Yard. John Harvard’s statue is rear center.


Architecture to die for.


Harvard is as much tourist mecca as university.


John Harvard, a Cambridge grad, started it all in 1636 with a gift of 400 books and some £779. Yup, he was an immigrant.


Millions have rubbed Harvard’s foot hoping their offspring would get an offer.


The (vegetarian) beggar woman may go hungry, but be assured that the Harvard Industry will sell you branded goods.


Totally integrated into the civilized city that is Boston. This is Wigglesworth Hall, a freshman dorm.


78 Mount Auburn Street is distinguished by its porthole style dormer ventilators. It was constructed in 1839.


In mock Flemish style, this strange 1909 building appropriately houses the Harvard Lampoon, one of the oldest satirical newspapers still published.


The Class of 1920 keeping fit.


As George Bernard Shaw reminds us, there is no truth in the rumor that the same tongue is spoken on both sides of the Atlantic.


Claverly Hall was built in 1893.


Lowell House dates from 1930.


Can you say ‘Gorgeous’? Straus Hall, a freshman dorm, dates from 1926.


The Holden Chapel. Built in 1744, this is one of the oldest surviving buildings at Harvard.


Winston at Harvard. Ahem! This is the Geological Museum, part of the Museum of Natural history.


Bessie the Rhino.


The Harvard endowment:

The most successful schools graduate the most successful pupils who return the favor with mighty gifts. Here are the top ten (from Wikipedia):

For subscribers to Disraeli’s ‘Lies, damned lies and statistics’ view of the world, here are the top ten sorted by endowment per pupil:

Harvard alumni – whether graduates or drop-outs – excel in all fields of human endeavor, and include Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg (drop-out), Bill Gates (drop-out), JFK, Matt Damon (drop-out), FDR, Natalie Portman, John Adams, Teddy Roosevelt, Larry Summers, Al Gore, JQ Adams, John Lithgow, Conan O’Brien, RFK, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Tommy Lee Jones, Henry Kissinger, John Hancock and John Roberts. More Harvard alumni hold CEO spots in the Fortune 500 than from any other school. The faculty list is no less impressive.

The official website is here.

Mark Zuckerberg’s luminous 2017 Commencement Address is here and it’s an absolute blast.