Vassar’s Institute for the Liberal Arts:
A Bridge to the Community and the World

hen I arrived at Vassar in 2017, my first meetings with faculty were inspiring. It seemed every scholar had a new and creative idea for engaging more broadly in pressing global, regional, and local challenges—demonstrating how liberal arts thinking could meet the moment. Several faculty members also pitched ideas for “centers” like a Center on Decolonization, a Center on Climate Sustainability, a Center on Philosophy and Law, and the list went on. Each of the ideas had merit. Still, I had worked in a university with many centers, and knew firsthand the balkanization that can emerge from well-intentioned centers—each ultimately needing an administrator, a set of policies and practices, space, and of course a budget. My experience also suggested that centers too often became silos, reinscribing the exact disciplinary divides they had been created to overcome.

At Vassar, we looked for a different organizational structure that could house our collective aspiration to be outwardly facing, to tackle real-life issues, and to engage deeply with the larger community in all its permutations. The Vassar Institute for the Liberal Arts, coming into being this October, will embody this vision. It is a convening place, a set of programs and events, and a gathering spot for new ideas, serendipitous conversations, and unexpected connections. The signature programs scheduled for this year cut across the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities in true liberal arts fashion. There is something for everyone with titles as follows: Eco-Visions: Finding Your Place in Environmentalism; The Entrepreneurial Mind and the Liberal Arts; Transgressing Borders: Reimagining Education and the Role of Learning and Community; Belonging and Beyond: Using Future Histories to Reimagine Teaching and Learning; Promoting Partnerships to Advance Educational Justice in Poughkeepsie; and Soundscapes and the Anthropocene. Read more about these programs on page 18.

Thanks to the generous support of donors, the Institute has been about seven years in the making. In that time, Vassar and the world experienced the global challenge of COVID, which delayed construction as well as taught us that the future of Vassar, its students, and its alums are intertwined with the world beyond our campus. Purposefully located on the property just east of Alumnae House, the Institute will bridge the campus and the wider community. The Heartwood hotel, The Salt Line restaurant, the Vassar Institute, as well as The Dede Thompson Bartlett Center for Admission and Career Education will form a new, more open connection to the Arlington and Poughkeepsie community. These buildings, their programming, and their posture of gracious hospitality exemplify the theme of “Vassar in the World” at a time when Vassar’s voice underscoring freedom of thought, openness, and sustained dialogue has never been more important.

In addition to hosting astounding events that will animate the campus and beyond, the Institute will allow us to shape and be shaped by the larger world—to show what it means to foster dialogue and creativity and to have our ways of thinking challenged by visitors, guests, and participants of all kinds. The core of higher education is to live always in pursuit of great understanding, and the Institute will provide a vehicle by which we may show the courage, humility, and motivation to remain curious, open, and ready to learn. These commitments are what we have in common, what we can celebrate together, and how we can sustain the value of higher education even in these deeply contested times in which our common ground can seem shaky. I hope you will participate in some of these programs and enjoy a taste of what is timeless at Vassar—the love of learning.