- I'm a little, like, nervous.
I'm, like, normally I give tours,
but they don't end up like on the internet forever.
(opening music)
Welcome to Smith College.
My name's Julie.
I'm a current senior,
government major, Spanish minor.
And I'm gonna take your on campus,
since we currently aren't on campus because of the pandemic.
This is the Quadrangle,
which is the largest housing area on campus.
Instead of dorms,
at Smith, we have houses,
which range from 10 people to over 100 people.
And these are some of the largest houses on campus,
but also a majority of campus lives here,
about 1500 people.
And each of these houses
have about a hundred people in them.
The nice thing about having houses
is that there is the added component of house community.
You live in a house mostly for all four years.
There are house events, such as house teas,
Winter Weekends,
which are like formal parties in the house living rooms.
And you get to know everybody very well.
And it's a good place to get to know people
outside of your major,
outside of your class year,
and just sort of come together to have that community
to come home to.
And my house is actually in the Quad.
It's King House,
which is over there.
And it's one of the biggest houses on campus.
Another aspect of house community that's really nice,
is that most of the houses in the quad are singles,
have mostly single rooms,
which means you,
after first year, you most likely won't have a roommate.
And that's really nice because,
since there's the house community,
you will have that space to come home to,
and have like your alone time,
but you can also just step outside,
go to the living room,
and hang out with your house at any time.
So that the nice balance that happens in the Quad.
(music)
Another aspect of houses that are really nice
is that there are 15 dining halls on campus.
And so in each area of campus,
you will have a few dining halls
with different dining options.
So King House's dining hall
is one of the biggest dining halls on campus.
And it's open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day,
very consistently.
But there are also dining halls like Northrop/Gillett,
which are vegan, vegetarian food.
There is a dining hall in the Quad in Comstock/Wilder
that does stir fry nights,
and is an Asian fusion dining hall.
So there's a lot of different food options as well
in your house.
This is where I live.
And it's a lovely place to live.
Each house also has its own traditions.
And the Quad itself also has a bunch of traditions
that houses do,
which, for example, there's the Quad Riot,
which is,
there's a Smith holiday called Mountain Day Every Day,
which is the prettiest day of the year.
And Quad Riot is when people from the Quad get together
and beg the president,
who's currently Kathleen McCartney,
for Mountain Day to happen the next day.
So we are going to go back onto campus.
(music)
So the Quad is the farthest area away from campus.
So it takes about 10 minutes to walk from here
to Seelye Hall,
which is, as a government major,
where most of my classes are.
So a lot of people have bikes
and use that to get around faster.
But overall, it's a pretty small campus,
and it's really easy to get around.
So over here,
there are also other houses on campus that you can live in.
So some of these houses are co-op houses,
for example, the house behind us.
So those houses have about 10 to 15 people,
and they all cook and clean the house together.
And that's something else,
a different part of house community
that you can be involved in as well at Smith.
This is Smith College's President's House.
It's right on campus, as you can see.
And a lot of fun things happen there.
For example, on Mountain Day,
in the morning before classes are canceled,
before we go to apple orchards, or on hikes,
or whatever activities our houses have planned for that day,
we all come here and have apple cider donuts
and apple cider that president serves to us.
So that's a nice fun tradition in a way to get involved.
And our house president is,
our president, sorry,
is directly on campus with us.
There's also Paradise Pond behind us,
which is the pond sort of in the middle
of the center of campus.
And something that's really nice to do,
is when the weather is nice,
you can rent a boathouse canoes,
or other sorts of like small boats,
like kayaks from the boat house with your OneCard,
which is your student ID at Smith.
So that's a really nice thing to do
when the weather is really good.
(music)
As I said, there are 35, 36 houses on campus.
So all of these houses around
are houses where students live.
So you can choose what area of campus you live in.
So for example, I live in the Quad,
but if you want to be closer to class
and live in a smaller house,
you can live in some of these houses over here.
This is Smith Campus Center.
So there's the Smith Campus Cafe over there.
There's the mail room downstairs.
And also there's the bookstore as well.
So you can get your books for class here.
You can send a letter to your parents.
You can do any sorts of like errand things as well in here.
There's also a bunch of meeting rooms in here
to meet with professors,
or to go to career panels,
or to have club meetings as well.
So it's a place that you end up being in a lot on campus.
So now we're entering the more academic part of campus.
So up here is JMD,
which is our big campus hall for the whole campus events.
So speakers come here.
There are also opening events in a year,
like Convocation, that happens here.
So this is a place where like the whole community
can gather and fit into one huge auditorium.
So now we're entering what is sort of the main humanities,
social sciences, academic quad.
So up here, there is the language building,
which a lot of my Spanish classes are in,
Hatfield Hall.
there's a lot of stuff professors' offices in Dewey,
so you'll end up there
when you need to talk to a professor about something,
or if you have a meeting with a professor
to talk about a paper,
or anything else that's happening on campus.
So there is the Art Building right here,
and that also has the Art Museum.
So there are an incredible amount of art pieces here,
and they also use it as a really nice teaching resource.
So you'll find many of these works used in your classes
and used as direct examples
of what you're learning in your class.
There's also a small library in there as well,
which is the Art Library,
which is my favorite library.
And this is the main academic building for me personally,
as a Gov major.
This is Seelye Hall.
It has some of the larger classes,
and some of the small seminar room classes as well.
Smith's really nice academically,
because we have an open curriculum.
So there are no set requirements
outside of a first-year seminar,
which is like a writing intensive class
that has so many options across like writing about science,
to like a specific art class,
or politics of Syria.
So there's a lot of options to choose.
Besides that,
you just have to take half of your classes
outside of your major.
So it gives you a lot of freedom to explore,
freedom to just choose and take a bunch of different classes
that you wouldn't try other places.
And behind us is the new library
that's being currently built.
So this as Neilson Library.
And I think it's gonna be finished in the fall of 2021,
or the spring of 2021.
So it's currently coming together really nicely.
The things I love most about Smith's academics
is that our classes are really small.
Our average class size is under 20 students.
So right now I'm in a class that's about eight people.
Some classes will be bigger if they're more popular,
but the largest classes I've had are about 30 people.
Whereas at larger schools,
you're gonna get a different classroom experience.
Because of that,
I have very close relationships with my professors,
and I feel very comfortable having them as mentors,
and am able to get a lot out of the professors
that I have in my classroom,
because I just got to know them better,
since there are less students.
(music)
This is Ford Hall on campus,
which is one of the newer campus academic buildings.
Ford Hall is the engineering building at Smith.
So as a historically women's college,
we are very lucky to have a good engineering program.
And it represents something that Smith has,
which is a large amount of women
and other gender minorities in STEM.
So at Smith,
there is a larger amount of STEM majors than normal
at other colleges for women and for other gender minorities.
I think the rate at Smith is about almost half
of the students major in some sort of STEM degree,
versus much less than that at other universities.
So that's something that we pride ourselves on.
And we have this really lovely building,
which has a lot of really cool labs inside.
There's some really cool technology
that the science people use in this building.
So now we're gonna go
to the performing arts section of campus,
and the music section of campus as well.
Now we're in the area of campus that's farthest
from the Quad.
So this has the music building, Sage Hall, behind us.
If you play in music,
there are many things like orchestras,
string quartets,
other things that you can join.
There are also private music lessons
that you can take for Smith
through Smith For Credit.
And so that's something that's also a really nice resource.
And behind us here
is the hall that is for performing arts.
So there's a lot of dance classes,
theater classes,
stage building classes,
things like that.
And there are also all of our performing arts halls here
where people put on plays,
or other sorts of presentations
for the performing arts sector.
And now here up above,
there is the athletic gym,
and this is a really nice gym on campus, actually.
And there's everything you could ask for in a gym,
a climbing wall,
a swimming pool,
track and field,
tennis courts.
in addition to the regular weightlifting room,
with like treadmills and other things like that,
that campus students can use on campus.
And behind me is the Schacht Center for Health and Wellness.
So this is something that's really important.
You will end up here at some point on campus for sure.
So there are doctors there.
There are nurses on call 24/7 here.
There is also a counseling and therapy area upstairs
where you can get appointments through the college as well.
So that's a really important place on campus to know about,
because it's important to stay healthy and safe.
So these are some of the smaller green street houses, again,
for example, Tyler House has a dining hall
that's open a little bit later than the rest of the houses.
It's open till like 9:00, 9:30 on the normal days.
So that's somewhere really popular
if you're, you know, late studying,
and you can head to the dining hall
and get a lot of different options that they have there.
(music)
Welcome to Clark Science Center,
which is the science quad on campus.
Behind me is Bass Hall,
which is the psychology hall,
and is also home to Young Library,
which is one of the best libraries on campus.
They have really cool little pods you can study in.
And behind me as well are Sabin-Reid and McConnell.
So they're home to the disciplines such as geo science,
math, physics,
and other hard sciences as well.
(music)
Smith's Campus is an arboretum,
so all of the trees on campus have tags
that say their official name,
and for example, this one is right there.
And so that is a really cool thing,
because the whole campus is this like active,
sort of research center,
and also has a ton of different plants.
And there's also the Smith Botanical Garden,
which is an incredible resource,
many classes such as horticulture
and other classes in biology
will use the laboratories inside of the Botanic Garden
as a real learning experience
for what they're studying on campus.
So that's a really cool thing that exists.
There are also things that happen there.
For example, there's a Bulb Show every spring
that happens inside the Botanic Garden,
where they have a bunch of really nice tulip bulbs
that they sort of display,
and people come and go there,
and it's really cool.
(music)
So a lot of the questions that I get on tours are,
range from more specific things about majors,
but also people ask often,
"Why did you go to a historically women's college?"
And for me personally, I love the atmosphere with that here.
There's an incredible sense of community.
The classroom experience is completely different
and very empowering.
And so that's something that's really cool to be a part of.
And it's something you kind of...
I can't entirely explain it unless you're here to see it,
but I hope you do come here to see it,
because it's a really nice thing to experience.
Another common question that I get is,
what about the Five College Consortium?
So Smith is part of a partnership with UMass,
Amherst, Mount Holyoke, and Hampshire college.
So you can take classes between the five colleges.
You can get involved in different clubs.
So I have friends who utilize that a ton.
I have a friend who was involved in a salsa club
at Hampshire.
I do debate,
and we worked with Amherst's Debate Society.
And so that's something that's a really nice resource
to get off campus
through the free bus that's available for students
to go to those colleges,
and be able to interact with different people.
(music)
I hope you enjoyed seeing Smith's Campus,
and hearing about what it's like to be a student here.
I've absolutely loved my experience at Smith.
It's given me so many awesome opportunities,
such as internships,
just learning experiences,
and so much more.
So I hope you learned more about Smith,
and I hope to see you on campus soon.
Bye.
(music continues)