ROSEMARY PARK ANASTOS, PRESIDENT OF BARNARD AND CONNECTICUT COLLEGES, DIES AT 97
 Rosemary Park Anastos, who was president of two women's colleges, Barnard and Connecticut colleges, during the 1940s through the 1960s and came from a family of academic leaders that included her father and a younger brother who were both presidents of women's colleges, died on April 17 in Los Angeles. She was 97.
Park (who was known as Rosemary Park professionally) was Barnard's president for only five years from 1962 to 1967 but left a major imprint on the College by greatly expanding both classroom and student residential space. Through her vision, the College was able to enroll more residential students from throughout the nation and indeed, worldwide. She planned an ambitious building program and raised the funds needed to accomplish it. Her vision led to the opening of the first campus student center (Millicent McIntosh Center) in 1969; a new residence hall (Plimpton Hall) in 1968, and a classroom and laboratory science building (Helen Goodhart Altschul Hall) in 1969. In addition, during her tenure, Barnard acquired two nearby residential buildings on West 116th Street for use as student residence halls.
"Usually one associates an accomplishment of this sort with fairly long tenure in the office: ten or fifteen years or even longer," wrote David Truman, Dean of Columbia College, in a tribute to Park published in the Barnard alumnae magazine in 1967. "The remarkable aspect of Rosemary Park's presidency is that it has compressed at least a decade of accomplishment into five years."
In addition to the building projects, Park undertook a major curricular reform that sought to open classroom discussion and course work to more reflection by students about larger issues in society, believing that the college years furnished the structure through which young people gained insight and abilities to make society better.
A scholar of German medieval literature, she assumed the presidency as Barnard marked its 75th anniversary with celebrations that included galas honoring the Queen of Greece and then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk, among others. Park recognized that women's colleges would come under new pressures with changing attitudes toward women's achievement in the early years of the 1960s.
She grappled with how Barnard could respond to these changes and urged changes in the curriculum as one way to do so. "More women wish today what a few have found for themselves in the past, the combination of professional activity and the home," she wrote in a 1964 report. "Sometimes I think that the great personal ambition and drive of many of our able students may derive from a sense that these complexities of the feminine existence are almost too great and that haste to learn as much as possible is the only way to cope. In its simplest form the problem is how to do better what the undergraduate college believes it does anyway, namely, cultivate interest and capacity for independent learning so that the intellectual tools never are allowed to rust even though the physical energies have other tasks."
She reached out to alumnae to help students face the challenges of women's changing roles in society, expanding the Barnard alumnae-student network that is one of the College's enduring strengths today.
"If all women students could face clearly how dependent they will be on their own intellectual resources for many years of their lives," she wrote, "then the quality of learning, already high, might be enhanced in these undergraduate years."
During the 1960s, as student protests over Vietnam roiled campuses and social attitudes among young people were undergoing major changes, Park sought to reach out to students to discuss their concerns and views and developed a reputation for cultivating understanding.
Truman applauded the "sympathy and respect with which Park reaches across the generation gap, not to curry favor or to find ways of imposing unexamined conventions, but to understand, to mediate between uncritical rebellion and the apparent needs of a responsible society, in short, to learn and to teach."
In addition to expanding alumnae involvement and fundraising, Park was credited with strengthening ties to Barnard's affiliated institution across Broadway in New York City, Columbia University, and with invigorating and expanding admissions to the College.
In 1995, Barnard presented Park with its highest honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction. The citation noted her concern that young women be not only aware of the needs of the society around them "but contributors to its betterment."
"In a declaration that resonates today, you decried what you called the 'count-me-out' attitude of students who were mainly interested in fulfilling their personal ambitions," the citation said.
Known for her elegant and gracious demeanor, her wit and sense of humor, she had a childhood disability that left her with a pronounced limp. Although she earned a Ph.D. she preferred to be called "Miss Park," rather than "Dr."
In 1965, she married for the first time a fellow academic, MIlton Anastos, a professor of Byzantine history at the University of California at Los Angeles. She left Barnard in 1967 to join him in California and became vice chancellor of educational planning and programs, then vice chancellor for student and curricular affairs at UCLA. She also taught courses on education and became professor emeritus in 1974. Her husband died in 1997.
Born in 1907 in Andover, Massachusetts, Park graduated summa cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1928, and after earning a master's degree in German, started her academic career in 1930 at Wheaton College, where her father, J. Edgar Park, was president from 1928 to 1944. She studied at the University of Cologne, receiving a doctorate in German in 1935, then became an instructor in German at what was then Connecticut College for Women, where she taught and was academic dean before becoming president in 1947. She served for 15 years, then succeeded Barnard's longtime leader, Millicent McIntosh, as president in 1962.
At Connecticut College, she also accomplished a major building program that included a new student-alumnae center, while breathing new life into the curriculum, and enlarging the student body by a third. At Connecticut College, she laid the groundwork for the college's 1969 transition to co-education.
The first woman to serve on the University of Notre Dame Board of Trustees, Anastos advised Notre Dame on becoming a coeducational institution. The Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, former president of Notre Dame, said that Anastos was one of the most visible leaders in higher education, and especially in higher education for women. "If you listed the 10 best women you met in your life, she'd be one of them," Hesburgh said.
She remained active in higher education throughout her retirement. In 1976-1977, she traveled the country as a Phi Beta Kappa lecturer, speaking on educational administration, the position of women in the university, the future of the liberal arts and the history of education. In 1980, she co-founded the Plato Society of UCLA, and participated in the organization's weekly discussions until shortly before her death.
Park's brother, William E. Park, had been president of the Northfield Schools, in Northfield, Mass. and president of Simmons College in Boston.
Her New England family included clergy and scholars; she was passionate about learning and an advocate of liberal arts studies. At her Barnard inauguration she criticized colleges for placing too much emphasis on specialization. Park's brother, William E. Park, had been president of the Northfield Schools, in Northfield, Mass. and president of Simmons College in Boston.
She was widely quoted on education issues in the media and articles to newspaper opinion pages. "Good teachers are made in many ways, and it takes more than a few courses in education and a clear voice to master the art. Let us not think that by adding to the strictly professional requirements of our teachers, we are inevitably securing better teaching. More is not better in this field," she wrote in a 1951 op-ed in The Hartford Times.
Park was the author of a book about Richard Wagner's opera Tristan and Isolde, published in 1935, and also wrote two German textbooks.
After leaving UCLA, Park was a trustee at many institutions and served as a member and later chair of the Board of Visitors of the Defense Intelligence College. She also contributed book reviews to Change Magazine. She was also the inspiration of The Higher Education of Women: Essays in Honor of Rosemary Park by H. Astin.
A tribute to Park with photos, some of her writings and a timeline is available on the Connecticut College website: http://www.conncoll.edu/people/park/).
Park received honorary degrees from 25 universities and colleges during her lifetime, including Yale, Columbia, New York University, Brown, Syracuse, Notre Dame, the University of Pennsylvania, and Oberlin, among others. She received the Los Angeles Times "Woman of the Year" Award in 1967 and the Radcliffe College Alumnae Award in 1974. She was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
She is survived by two nieces, Nancy Seybold and Joan Citron, who was with her when she died. A memorial service will take place at UCLA at a future date. |
