Jeanmarie Salie is now living among the giant evergreens on Pine Manor College's 60-acre campus in Brookline. Buried deep in the soil is a tradition of debutante days on campus, when breakfast was routinely taken in bed on Sunday mornings. As a member of the largest incoming class -- at 206 students -- in the school's history, Salie, 17, will graduate from an institution whose alumnae might not recognize it.
In the 10 years since she became president, Gloria Nemerowicz has turned a two-year junior college whose reputation was always more of an elite finishing school than a serious place of study into the number one liberal arts college for campus diversity for the fourth year in a row, according to US News & World Report. Of the 455 students in attendance at the four-year school last fall, 33 percent identified as black and 12 percent as Hispanic.
Nemerowicz describes Pine Manor College as one of the "best kept secrets in Boston." City residents need a reintroduction. A decade into their mission of inclusive leadership and social responsibility, after opening their doors to women who would otherwise lack the means to finance a private college education, many still ask, "Pine what?"
"There was some sense they were ready to listen to a different vision of the future," Nemerowicz says of her recruiting process, "It was important to get that match." With a lifelong interest in equality and access, she came to Pine Manor after founding the Women's Leadership Institute at Wells College in upstate New York. In 1996, the year of her arrival, only 71 students filled the incoming class.
Nemerowicz is slow to take credit for much of anything. She cut tuition by 34 percent in 1998 after 1925 alumna Frances Crandall Dyke gave an unrestricted bequest of $4 million.
"It was the right time, the right place," she says, "I couldn't have predicted that gift." Instead of putting the money toward operational costs or other, more immediate financial concerns, Nemerowicz created the College's Fund for Affordable Education to bring a private liberal arts education to the women who most needed it.
"If Bill Gates and his big picture schools are leading a nationwide initiative to improve education at the high school level through smaller schools," offers Robin Engel, dean of admissions and financial aid, "Gloria is one of the few bringing that same level of energy and commitment to providing the benefits of a small school environment to whomever wants it."
Nadia Chamblin-Foster, a 1994 graduate, describes herself as "part of the old days of Pine Manor College," when there were fewer students of color like herself. Chamblin-Foster, director of development at Boston University's School of Social Work, disconnected from the school after graduation. Slowly she noticed the "photographs of the girls were changing" in the promotional materials sent to alumnae and she wanted to support the new direction of her alma mater.
A member of the board of trustees, Chamblin-Foster sees the changed mission as a "social justice movement, a social justice issue." She attributes any dissent among the 15,000 alumnae as a lack of information or awareness. "It looks very different, seeing a campus full of women of color, speaking different languages," says Chamblin-Foster. "Providing a quality four-year education to women from working and poor families is different from what the typical Pine Manor College woman came from."
Nemerowicz's challenge for the next few years is securing the financial future of the college while still providing tuition at reasonable levels and necessary financial aid. The average need-based scholarship is $7,200. "Different revenue streams, an entrepreneurial spirit in keeping with the mission," cites Nemerowicz of two strategies, "$100,000 here and $100,000 there. It helps to keep the creativity juices flowing."
Soon Salie, who started classes Aug. 30, will join Nemerowicz for lunch on Tuesdays with Gloria, when the president's office is open to first-years. Like many in her class of 2010, Salie is the first of her immediate family to attend college. "I had to work really hard to graduate with my high school class," explains Salie, who said her mother's third incarceration coincided with her sophomore year at Chelsea High School. Family worries loomed larger than schoolwork. When talk turned to college during her junior year, she reasoned, "I had already messed up."
Salie might have attended a local community college had it not been for the persistence of family acquaintance Sue Clark, director of Choice Thru Education, a program to help teenage mothers stay in school. Clark kept pushing the Pine Manor College idea. Resistant at first, Salie eventually applied . She credits her acceptance to her essay and SAT scores, which showed a capability and intelligence that her grade point average failed to capture.
This summer Salie worked the graveyard shift as a certified nurse's assistant at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, a position she will continue on Saturdays during the school year.
She hopes to qualify for the 2 + 2 Bachelor of Science in Nursing Program, in which Pine Manor College students with grade point averages of 3.2 or higher are able to transfer to the William F. Connell School of Nursing at Boston College during their junior year to complete the nursing degree. Students still pay Pine Manor College's $26,600 tuition as compared with Boston College's $45,000.
"They're giving me a second chance," Salie pauses. "I'm not going to ruin it."
|
