A Woman's Education: The Road from Coorain Leads to Smith College - Softcover

Jill Ker Conway

Softcover

ISBN 10: 009957991X ISBN 13: 9780099579915

Publisher: Random House Pod, 2003

Synopsis

Conway opens with her assessment of her life, passions, possibilities and the making of her decision to leave Canada and return to the United States to become Smith's first woman president. Settling into her new environment, she is at once struck by the beauty of the Connecticut Valley and the Olmstead-designed Smith campus - but also by the College's financial problems and a quarrelsome and complaining faculty engaged in disputes and trivial lawsuits. The jolt of energy she gets from being in the presence of several thousand young women enables her to take on the various Smith constituencies: the self-appointed custodians of the great western male tradition of humanistic learning, the puzzled liberals, the younger male feminists, the 'lady scholars doing intellectual petitpoint', and the young committed feminists of all stripes. We see her harnessing the negative energies in more positive directions, redefining and redesigning parts of the institution, strategising, positioning herself and building a political base, introducing feminist scholarship into the curriculum, creating a programme for older students and a funded research centre, adding fields of study and athletic programmes, developing strong career counselling, changing investment strategy, increasing the endowment - and, in general, mobilising the institution to share the urgency she felt for shaping the kind of women's institution that would attract the students of the '90s and beyond. Through it all we see her continuing to cope with her husband John's ill health and learning to protect and sustain her inner self in the quiet solitude of gardening at their country home - a North American variant of the solitude of her native Australian plains. As the end of the Smith decade approaches, she reviews what she has learned and decides that she has had her education and that it is time to 'graduate'.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"One of the leading educators of our time - Jill Ker Conway - had described the challenges and
the benefits of a first rate university for women in contemporary society. Her path as President
of Smith College gives us an insider's view not only of the institutional side but the personal
demands and their burdens. It is a fascinating and important story."
--Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, U.S. Supreme Court

"Jill Ker Conway offers an elegant and highly readable narrative of both women's education and
her own amidst the feminist revolution of the late twentieth century. This is a personal as well as
a social and cultural history -- and a compelling story besides."
-- Drew Gilpin Faust, Dean, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and author of Mothers
of Invention

"A WOMAN'S EDUCATION is another inspiring chapter in Jill Ker Conway's life. This time she
recounts the struggle and triumphs as the first woman president of Smith College. It is a story
of strengths and hope and success in a woman's education. Nothing came easy to this gallant woman."
-- Thomas Winship, former Editor of The Boston Globe
"In A WOMAN'S EDUCATION Jill Ker Conway continues her fiercely introspective and fearless study
of her own life, public role and intellectual development. It is a compelling story of an active, ambitious
and intellectually forceful woman who has shaped her own life. And along the way, she provides an
invaluable and frank history of how a women's college met the challenges of the second wave of feminism
under the direction of a thoroughly independent thinker who was determined to build a modern, feminist
institution. As her successor, I was constantly aware of my debt to her, and found her own story of her
years at Smith entirely fascinating and instructive."
-- Mary Maples Dunn, President Emerita, Smith College

"Jill Ker Conway continues the absorbing and beautifully crafted account of her life's journey with her
experiences as president of Smith. As always, her autobiography is an excellent read for anyone who
cares about interesting lives, thoughtfully described. This particular volume should appeal to anyone who
has ever wondered what college and university presidents actually do, and why anyone would want such
a job. Jill gives her own answers to these questions with candor, humor, and acute attentiveness to the
multifaceted nature of the sometimes bizarre and apparently impenetrable office of the president."
-- Nannerl O. Keohane, President, Duke University

"Jill Conway gives the reader that rare glimpse of a whole person tacking historic events. Her language is
clear and crisp, her observations astute, her understanding of history remarkable, even as she is making it,
yet all this from a woman's point of view -- not only about success or failure, but the larger issues of living....
Ultimately, Jill Conway, like any great author, leaves us better off for our journey through A Woman's Education.
Her deep respect for life, her careful, honest, open exploration of how we live our lives and her unrelenting
belief in a set of values that have the power to take root in people and institutions makes us take stock of
our own lives. She does this graciously, joyfully, and enjoyably."
-- F Baron Harvey III, CEO, The Enterprise Foundation

"A Woman's Education provides a rare insider's view of what it means and what it takes to be a college
president, as well as a unique perspective on an institution many of us have come to know and love.
It was the first thing I handed to Carol Christ, the moment after she was elected the new President
of Smith College."
-- Shelly Lazarus, CEO, Oglesby & Mather, and Chair of the Smith College Trustees

Jill Ker Conway is the the first to have written of years as a college or university president. In this book,
nonetheless, she has set a standard to which all in the future will have to conform. In diversly interesting
English, with penetrating insight and memory, she has told of the problems and prospects of leading a
much admired college. And of doing it very well. No one can think that they have a full understanding of
women's rights, scholarly conflict, required personal commitment and true accomplishment who hasn't
read these pages. And further, no one can know what enjoyment was missed. On education, not to say
also personal biography, it is truly the book of the year.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith

"To be president of Smith from 1975 to 1985 required guts and resilience; Conway met the challenge.
Her compelling account of that roller-coaster ride prompts amazement. There is much to marvel at here;
my favorite gem is her portrayal of the aging male conservative faculty defending their cozy turf."
-- Carolyn Heilbrun, author of Writing a Woman's Life

"This masterful story interweaves lives with institutional history and modern times. The backdrop is a
renowned woman's college that was fated to be hidebound by tradition until it captured a president
whose past dictated her future and that of the college. Challenged by the opportunity, she led courageous
innovations and, amazingly agile in neutralizing foes, and intellectually honest, she chose to act on what
mattered most to the long-term viability of the college. In the process, she captured the imagination
and support of a disparate gang -- students, trustees, faculties, and administrators. It is a poignant tale of
personal and professional courage that should be read because it is all so human and so profound.
Lessons are there for the young and the old because she dares to tell the truth."
-- Margaret F. Mahoney, MEM Associates, Inc.

"As a Smith alumna and a fellow laborer in the groves of women's colleges, I found Jill Ker
Conway's book both absorbing and touching....Her educational vision and personal courage
stood her, and eventually the institution she served so well, in very good stead. A Woman's
Education is an engaging personal study of a complicated period in the women's movement and
in the development of selective women's colleges."
-- Mary Patterson McPherson, The Andrew Mellon Foundation and President Emeritus, Bryn Mawr College

From the Inside Flap

The acclaimed author of the best-selling The Road from Coorain and True North now gives us the third book in her remarkable continuing memoir—describing the pleasures, the challenges, and the constant surprises (good and bad) of her years as the first woman president of Smith College.

The story opens in 1973 as Conway, unbeknownst to her, is first "looked over" as a prospective candidate by members of the Smith community, and continues as she assesses her passions and possibilities and agrees to the new challenge of heading the college in 1975. The jolt of energy she gets from being surrounded by several thousand young women enables her to take on the difficulties that arise in dealing with the diverse Smith constituencies—from the self-appointed protectors of the great male tradition of humanistic learning to the equally determined young feminists insisting on change. We see Conway juggling the needs and concerns of faculty, students, parents, trustees, and alumnae, and re-defining and redesigning aspects of the college to create programs in line with the new realities of women's lives. We sense the urgency of her efforts to shape an institution that will attract students of the 1990s and beyond.

Through it all we see Jill Ker Conway coping with her husband's illness, and learning to protect and sustain her inner self. As the end of a decade at Smith approaches, we see her realizing that she has both had her education and made her contributions, and that it is time now for her to graduate.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Pod
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 009957991X
• ISBN 13: 9780099579915
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160