Hobart and William Smith Colleges

College is a transformative time for students, both intellectually and personally. At Hobart and William Smith, college success means more than finding the right combination of scholarly focus and involvement; it includes developing deep and genuine relationships with faculty, staff, and peers along with identifying ways to engage in distinctive experiences on and off campus. While college culminates in individual students earning their bachelor’s degree as they launch into their next steps in career or postgraduate education, the journey is not a solitary one. The HWS experience is intended to be a deeply collaborative one, and its success requires strong relationships with professors, internship supervisors, fellow researchers, campus and community collaborators, peer mentors, and many others who invest their time and talent in authentic and generous relationships with students. This means that earning an HWS degree is evidence of both a student’s academic achievement as well as of their personal growth and meaningful engagement in all that college has to offer.

The HWS Deans consider college success and engagement to be an inherent part of that journey as we help to guide students from the first-year seminar experience through to graduation and partner in advising them on their academic plans, requirements, and policies. We mentor students on how to build with intentionality the kinds of unique campus engagements and experiences that Hobart and William Smith offers to shape a full and meaningful life—one that will continue to resonate for years to come—because we understand that at HWS developing relationships with faculty, staff, peers, and alums is essential to learning to lead lives of consequence. The HWS Deans get to know students—not only in terms of their scholarly goals for programs, majors, and degrees—but in terms of their broad goals for careers and for life. We know that students bring their life experiences, values, ideas of self and society to campus with them, and that the transformative education HWS offers happens one class, one experience, and one relationship at a time.

In all these ways, then, the HWS Deans focus on a holistic sense of academic belonging in their work with students. They engage in close collaboration and partnership with faculty instructors and advisors as well as with the academic support staff in key offices such as the Center for Teaching and Learning, Global Education, Career Services, and the Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning. They also partner with staff in Campus Life, the Counseling Center, Student Engagement, Housing, and Hubbs Health Center to ensure that students feel seen as whole people because our whole campus community recognizes that academic wellbeing can be impacted by multiple factors.

The HWS Deans draw upon the connections they form with students during the first year of study to build meaningful bridges into the sophomore and junior years as well as to foster a greater sense of belonging for seniors and alums in the years up to and following graduation.