Leadership
Under her leadership in 2001-2002, Barnard completed both a College strategic plan and a campus master plan. The College is now poised to undertake an ambitious building and restoration program over the coming decades, beginning with the selection of an architect in the fall of 2003 to design a new multi-use six-story center for academic and social activities, which will house a new library, student activity space, faculty offices, a café and a 900-seat event space on Barnard’s architecturally distinguished campus.
In the course of a three-year curriculum review initiated by President Shapiro in the 1990s, Barnard redefined the components of a superior liberal arts education through its highly regarded focus on "The Ways of Knowing", nine areas that together explore the major cross-disciplinary means by which human knowledge has been constructed.
President Shapiro was a strong proponent of the College’s goal to prepare women with the necessary skills to succeed in the future. An impressive example is The Barnard Electronic Archive and Teaching Laboratory (BEATL). By utilizing Web technology to enhance teaching and coursework, BEATL has become an indispensable portal to academic information and resources.
Building on a strong financial foundation, the College doubled its endowment to $134 million during President Shapiro's tenure and has continued to expand its annual fundraising, even during the economic downtown of the 2002-2003 fiscal year, when a record $25 million in gifts and pledges was raised. And, in recent years, the number of alumnae who made gifts to the College has doubled.
Shapiro established a major public forum in 2001, The Barnard Summit. The inaugural Summit on the Barnard campus drew an audience of more than 1,000 people for a discussion on women’s leadership; panelists included former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, activist Marian Wright Edelman, and General Claudia Kennedy, the first female three-star general. Connecticut Public Television produced a program on the Summit, which aired in March 2003. The 2003 Barnard Summit drew an international who’s who of experts on women’s health—from the United Nations, the U.S. government, leading medical schools and international advocacy groups and foundations—and will be the subject of a PBS documentary.
Read more about this topic: Judith Shapiro
Famous quotes containing the word leadership:
“Nature, we are starting to realize, is every bit as important as nurture. Genetic influences, brain chemistry, and neurological development contribute strongly to who we are as children and what we become as adults. For example, tendencies to excessive worrying or timidity, leadership qualities, risk taking, obedience to authority, all appear to have a constitutional aspect.”
—Stanley Turecki (20th century)
“The liberal wing of the feminist movement may have improved the lives of its middle- and upper-class constituency—indeed, 1992 was the Year of the White Middle Class Woman—but since the leadership of this faction of the feminist movement has singled out black men as the meta-enemy of women, these women represent one of the most serious threats to black male well-being since the Klan.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)