Southeastern Massachusetts University - Scrimshaw Yearbook (North Dartmouth, MA)

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SMU offers its students an opportunity for genuine self-discovery, for broad learning in the various academic disciplines, and for the chance to combine these with the acquisition of practical skills leading to definite career capabilities. SMU's basic premise-that an educational institution must combine excellence with the specific, practical needs of those it would educate-also finds expression in its community programs. Many graduates find employment in local business and industry, SMU is working closely with these groups, both to provide feedback to its students about changes in a given career area, and to fulfill its goal of actively contributing to all aspects of life in the southeastern Massachusetts community. A comparable commitment to enriching the cultural life of the region is expressed through SMU's numerous programs and activities, including concert series, art exhibits, lectures, dramatic productions and other events which are made available to the public. SMU is a blend of the practical and the visionary in which the vital connecting link is, and will continue to be, the individual 's ability, determination, integrity, and imagination. The words practical and visionary, describe the kind of students that are conducive to SMU: practical men and vvomen who have goals in life, and vvho knovv that no worthwhile goal is arrived at without exploration, experimentation, and a mastery of basic skills,' and students vvho are visionary not only in the sense of dreaming bold dreams as they plan a career and a lifetime in a vvorld of incredibly expanding opportunity and challenge, but vvho also have a willingness to blaze the trails and perform the hard work required to translate their dreams into reality, and the ability and record of past achievement which are essential in this effort.

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SMU: A SYNOPSIS Southeastern Massachusetts University is a publicly supported coeducational institution of higher learning. It is fully accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, lnc. SMU has assumed three major responsibilities as a University: instruction, research, and service to the larger community of which it is a subsidary society. lts varied curricula are predicated on the belief that nothing is truly learned until it has been intergrated with the purposes of the individual, for facts and principles can never serve any worthy human purpose unless they are restrained and guided by character. The University earnestly endeavors to provide a climate which will contribute to the development of balanced individuals of wider personal contacts and interest as well as quickened imaginations and disciplined intelligence. At SMU, the l7982- 79831 undergraduate enrollment was approximately 5,300, and the individual remained an individual. This quality is essential to the realization of SMU's basic educational aim: to assist all students in identifying their major areas of interest, and so enable them to pursue undergraduate curricula that will most effectively match their talents to their goals, in both the immediate academic sense, and the longer range considerations of their lives and careers. This same atmosphere is also a major attraction for faculty members, who come to SMU in order to be able to practice the art of teaching through close personal contact with students, as well as to carry out research or engage in graduate-level seminar-type instruction. The full time faculty numbers 297 during the yeear 7983, with over 75 percent terminally qualified, i.e. with the doctorate or its equivalent in their respective disciplines. The extent to which the close student- faculty interaction ideal is a working reality is reflected in the average class size of 25 students. The excellence of the teaching faculty was given special recognition in a recent report by the regional accreditation agency. Many students found that the most salient reason for attending SMU is its ability-and eagerness-to experiment, to innovate, to listen attentively. The University not only actively seeks to find out what programs and courses its students need and want, but insists on creating them in conformity with the highest academic standards. Thus, what happens at SMU is very largely determined by the interests, the goals, and the ambitions of its students. The absence of long established traditions to fall back on has made possible an atmosphere in which spontaneity, relevancy, the new, and the untried are not seen as threats but as opportunities - an atmosphere very much of why not rather than why. tai www ,hx f su .4 ,1 ,,,,. .hu -f ,ga Q, - L. 5 fi 1 7522 W , . Q-f .. X Q' 1 s sw Q y e.. V' AK Y . , ' f 'l -'Q 5 x 1 .9 3 S1

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Southeastern Massachusetts Technological Iinstitute was created in 1960 by an act of the General Court on the recommendation of the Governor to provide a diversified educational program for the Southeastern Massachusetts area and for the Commonwealth. ln enacting this legislation, the General Court directed that SMTI assume the responsibilities of two existing colleges in the area - Bradford Durfee College of Technology and the New Bedford Institute of Technology, both of which had been established in 1895. These institutions were consolidated into SMTI in 1964 and since that time the Institution has been engaged in an intensive program of development. One aspect of this development has been enrichment of the curriculum. ln September of 1965, baccalaureate degree programs in the humanities and social science were instituted to complement existing programs in engineering, the sciences, business administration, textile technology and the fine and applied arts. As a result of this enriching diversification of curricular offerings, Governor Francis B. Sargent of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts signed into law at the Commencement Exercises, June 9 1969, a bill advocating a change of name from Southeastern Massachusetts Technological Institute to Southeastern Massachusetts University. Thus, on September 7, 1969, the Institute officially became a University. Southeastern Massachusetts University is situated on a wooded 7 1O-acre site in Dartmouth, a town of 23,000. The concept for the University's national award winning campus was created by architect Paul Rudolph. The campus design is the personification of the SMU character why not.