Cultivating Late Bloomers

By Janice Castro

Smith's Ada Comstock Scholars give more than they take

For most undergraduates at elite Smith College in Northampton, Mass., the road to one of the Seven Sisters has been smooth and untroubled. Despite the considerable work load there is always the comfortable feeling that the $8,430-a-year tuition bill will be met. But Gilda Palano is different. For a start, she is 48, and when she graduates next year with a B.A. in anthropology and sociology she will have overcome more obstacles than most of the young women around her will face in a lifetime.

Palano has a registered nursing diploma, has been married for 27 years to a mechanic at a General Electric plant in Pittsfield, had four children of her own and took in two foster children. Tragedy seems to have stalked her: her mother left home when Palano was nine, she lost a daughter to cancer and she suffered a spinal injury in an auto crash, which forced her to spend her life on crutches. None of this has stopped her from going back to school, first to a community college and then, in 1980, transferring to Smith's innovative degree program for older women. For three days a week Palano lives on campus, taking courses paid for through a variety of grants and loans. "Just finding out your brain still works at this age is a neat thing," she says.

What will make a college degree possible for Palano is Smith's eight-year-old Ada Comstock Program for women over 22. Named for a former dean (class of '97) who later became president of Radcliffe, the program is both generous and uncompromising: there is no time limit for earning a degree and, for needier students, there is financial help; but the "Adas" (their campus nickname) must attend the same classes as regular four-year students, which means no snap courses and no credits for "life experience," a popular trend in adult education.

Smith provides an outstanding example of the surge in adult education in America, as the population of 18-year-olds continues to decline. One-third of the 12.4 million U.S. students now enrolled in degree programs are over 25, and the majority of these are women: 2,425,000 in 1981, up from 1 million in 1972. Many of these students are enrolled in state universities or community colleges, but even highly competitive Ivy League schools have bachelor's degree programs for older students. Yale has begun admitting adults on a part-time basis, and Brown has had a program for adults since 1972, originally intended for returning Viet Nam veterans. Both Wellesley and Mount Holyoke have vigorous programs for older women who want to complete a degree, prepare for new jobs or simply enlarge their horizons. Adult students have a "greater capacity," says Smith History Professor Stanley Elkins, "simply because they are older, have lived longer and have had the experience."

Indeed, Smith sees its older students as such a positive asset that it is constantly enlarging the program: it began with just 16 women and this academic year has an enrollment of 161. Of the 82 potential Adas who applied to Smith this year, only 61 were accepted, and 46 are currently enrolled. Entry to the program is based on previous academic performance, an autobiographical essay and letters of recommendation.

The background of many of these students has been a surprise to the college. Ada Administrator Eleanor Rothman recalls that when the program was first proposed, the faculty expected to receive genteel inquiries from well-to-do women yearning to complete their degrees. Instead, applications poured in from clerks, secretaries, farmers, nurses and switchboard operators. One woman, who worked as an apple picker, wrote in her application: "I am ready to go to school because I need to." Another Ada, Barbara Rosenheck, 46, the widowed mother of four, now spending part of the week in a Smith dormitory, feels as if she is living "with my own daughters."

More than half the Adas need some sort of financial aid, and much of Rothman's time is spent cajoling money from a variety of sources. The most important one for her at present is the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation of Flint, Mich., which has given a grant to Smith for the education of mothers on welfare. Since 1975, Rothman has raised $2 million, and the money, she says, has been well spent because Adas are achievers: 20% graduate Phi Beta Kappa, and 34% win honors.

These achievements are often against incredible odds. Eileen Harris, 32, a telephone operator from Springfield for the past 14 years, works the 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. shift, grabs a few hours of sleep, gets her children off to school, then drives 18 miles to class. Says Rothman: "The Adas are not more intelligent than the traditional undergraduate, just more highly motivated." Explains Beverly Donovan, 31 , a divorced mother of two children who is on welfare: "It's very clear to me that I'm going to have to be making money and supporting myself and my children, and I don't have anyone to fall back on." Adas have become teachers, lawyers, ministers and one is a foreign correspondent for a news agency. Michele Lindsay, 30, spent four years in a backwoods student Vermont cabin without electricity or running water before en tering Smith. She is now a municipal-note trader at Morgan Guaranty Trust on Wall Street.

Younger students and faculty alike agree that Adas are contributing at least as much to Smith as they are getting. Elkins recalls a 62-year-old Ada who once, during a lecture, corrected him on the date that gas lamplighters disappeared from the streets of Boston. Says he: "She was right, and the kids got a great kick out of it." Elkins notes that the Adas bring to class an intense intellectual hunger often lacking in younger students. Adas, he says, are good consumers "and by golly, they want their money's worth. That's healthy for a college." Junior Jennifer Larsen, 20, agrees: "It is really help ful to have women who can bring in a lot of different points that have never occurred to people my age." The world out side Smith also stands to gain from the program. Rosenheck, a psychology major, plans to go into counseling "to help women like myself know that they can do this, too, that they don't have to settle for less." Says she: "I have a lot to give back." -- By Janice Castro. Reported by RuthMehrtens Calvin/Northampton

With reporting by Ruth Mehrtens Calvin/Northampton This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.