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New Leader Says Simmons Should Reach Out

Posted on: Wednesday, 21 December 2005, 12:00 CST

By Marcella Bombardieri, The Boston Globe

Dec. 21--The president-elect of Simmons College said yesterday she wanted to help catapult the school to national prominence, in part by focusing on educating women in developing countries.

"Simmons is this little hidden jewel, and part of my mandate is to make much more visible what Simmons is doing," said Susan C. Scrimshaw, a medical anthropologist and dean of the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. She was introduced to the campus yesterday.

Scrimshaw, 60, will take the reins in July of the only women's undergraduate college in Boston or Cambridge, with Lesley College having recently gone coed. Simmons also houses the nation's only women's MBA program as well as coeducational graduate programs in social work, library science, health, and education.

She will take over from Daniel S. Cheever Jr., who, in 10 years as president, helped transform Simmons from a fractious and ailing campus to one with solid finances, growing enrollment, and increasingly competitive admissions.

Scrimshaw was raised in Guatemala, where her father worked with the World Health Organization, but finished high school in Newton. She said she was impressed by several international ventures already underway at Simmons, including projects to train librarians in Vietnam, train nurses in Egypt, and improve healthcare in Nicaragua. Simmons is also helping rebuild libraries in Iraq.

Scrimshaw yesterday told a gathering of about 350 professors and staff members that she envisioned expanding such projects and developing a strong emphasis on international education.

"What about transforming nations through empowering and educating, particularly women, but families and communities?" she asked rhetorically.

"It's something where Simmons could be unique -- not every country at once but a few key regions."

In an interview, Scrimshaw also said she wants to expand programs to allow a student to obtain a bachelor's and master's degree in five years and create more joint ventures with other local universities. Simmons has 1,900 undergraduates and 2,800 graduate students.

She also said she has a mandate from trustees to improve the racial and ethnic diversity of the student body and the faculty. About 20 percent of each group is nonwhite.

Scrimshaw, who greeted the crowd yesterday in Spanish, also speaks Portuguese and French. Some of her work as an anthropologist has focused on family planning and pregnancy health in Latin American and in Latino and African-American communities in the United States.

Several professors said they came away from the meeting with a favorable impression.

"It's an auspicious start," said social work professor Gary Bailey, who said he was glad she was a woman and someone who calls herself bicultural. "I think having someone who's grown up in a different culture makes a huge difference."

"We were looking for someone who could raise the profile of the college. Outside the New England region, our profile is not anywhere near what it should be," said Jo-Ann Robotti, a trustee who chaired the search committee.

Scrimshaw served for 11 years as dean at the University of Illinois at Chicago and before that spent seven years as associate dean of the School of Public Health at UCLA.

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Source: The Boston Globe

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