PSS Spring 25

Pulteney Street Survey - Spring 2025

Judith Hershey Melly L.H.D. '16, Chair Emeritus L. Thomas Melly '52, L.H.D. '02 and President Mark D. Gearan on campus in 2016.

Dear Friends,

Admist the challenges facing the higher education sector nationally, Hobart and William Smith has made far-reaching advances in every area, continuing to deliver on our promise to students that they will receive an excellent education preparing them to lead a life of consequence. This issue of The Pulteney Street Survey details some of the work underway to make certain that we will do so for our third century.

In an act of unprecedented generosity, Tom and Judy Melly have made a $70 million gift to Hobart and William Smith, the largest in our history.

Read President Mark D. Gearan's Full Letter

Athletics

Updates

The Gift That Will Define

Our Next Century

Limitless

Discovery

Anchored by major gifts from alumni and parents, the new integrated science center concentrates interdisciplinary collaboration, innovative research and place-based learning in a single state-of-art facility facing the Quad.

Between a strong curriculum, outstanding faculty, vibrant summer research opportunities and the unique resources of the living laboratory that is the Finger Lakes region, Hobart and William Smith offers science education that is as academically robust as it is future focused.

Community

Notes

Last Word

The Strength and the Challenge

Last WordThe Strength and the Challenge

HWS Trustee and former Dean of William Smith Rebecca MacMillan Fox L.H.D. ’95 reflects on her years at HWS, the evolution of Hobart and William Smith’s coordinate history and the future of higher education.

Thinking about your years as William Smith Dean, what stands out?

I came to William Smith in 1981. It was an incredible place to be at that time in higher education. It was in some ways the beginning of the women’s movement’s impact on higher education. It was only recently that larger numbers of women were being admitted to law schools, business schools and medical schools. “Feminism” was still seen by some as a dirty word. It was a time when women were taking their places in the world in a very different way. And I wanted students to be aware of all that. The fact that William Smith was a women’s college but in a coordinate structure made it an ideal place to have conversations about these broader cultural changes and how they impacted young women — and young men. I saw it as an opportunity, and an important part of students’ education, to question the roles they saw themselves occupying in society.