Rehearsing for the upcoming production of “Speaking of Sheldon” are from left, Jessica Quindlen ’12, Rebecca Horning, Mark Cole ’73, Robin Curtis ’78, Michael Beshures ’12, Nicholas Pike ’13 and Clarissa Bawarski ’15.

Alumni unable to visit campus can still enjoy the show. The college plans to stream a performance on the Web in February.

“When the opportunity arose for the Theatre Department to participate in some way in the Sesquicentennial celebration, Tim Nekritz M ’05 suggested that I look at this text and I was immediately drawn to Sheldon’s ability to describe his life and times —particularly his rural upbringing which must have shaped his work ethic — in ways that not only offer a portrait of his development, but also fascinating bits of information about social life and education in the 19th Century,” Cole said.

A reader’s theatre approach to performance places a writer’s text in the foreground so that character and description — the writer’s style and voice — can be appreciated. In this new production, four student performers, Jessica Quindlen ’12, Michael Beshures ’12, Nicholas Pike ’13 and Clarissa Bawarski ’15, joined by Curtis will bring Sheldon’s words to life — from descriptions of his parents and farm life to his early experiences as a student, to his tender description of his courtship and marriage, and his sister’s record of his last days.

“I’ve known and admired Robin’s work for many years — having first seen her in shows at Oswego and later in musicals at Springside Inn Dinner Theatre, and then of course in film and television. We happened to work together for a Reader’s Theatre presentation I adapted for a dinner based on the story of the Titanic, presented by the Marine Museum in Oswego several years ago. Then through ARTSwego, we were thrilled to present a reading of her one-woman show, ‘A Good Girl,’ here in Waterman. When I approached her about participating in this performance she immediately said yes. It will be a great opportunity for our student performers to work with her.”

The iconic Sheldon statue has been part of the Oswego experience for roughly a century and serves as a tie binding several decades of former students who recognize it as a common symbol.

Middle school French teacher and amateur photographer Samantha Decker ’09 became particularly enamored with the statue her senior year at Oswego. Her reflections below complement these images she captured on campus.

My interest in photography developed during my senior year at Oswego, I began trying to capture every memorable part of the campus and the city on “digital film” to look back at for years to come.

The statue of Edward Austin Sheldon was a favorite subject of mine, in part because it was easy to vary. I could get in close and blur the background, I could come from different angles, or I could zoom way out and get Sheldon Hall in the background. I also took to the Sheldon statue because it represented my pride as an Oswego student.

Every time I would return to campus after a school break, Professor Sheldon would welcome me home as I followed the windy road to the Hart Hall parking lot. As an education major (and now a teacher), I had several classes in Sheldon Hall. I was proud to attend an institution which started out as a teacher’s college and had such a fine education program.

I am so grateful that I left Oswego with all these visual memories.

Samantha Decker ’09 lives in Saratoga Springs, where she teaches French at a middle school, takes
photographs and develops websites.

They say I was born October 4, 1823, and from this date I reckon my years. It seemed to me a long time from one to twenty-one. As a boy I felt that I could never live to be twenty-one. Even now as I look back over my existence, it sometimes seems to me that I have lived forever.

My School Life

School life to me was one continuous holiday. To study was out of the question. I did not know what it was to study. I have no remembrance of having studied a moment in two years, unless it might be called studying to memorize lists of (to me) utterly meaningless words. …

The boy literally hated study. With tears in his eyes, over and over again, he pleaded with his father to allow him to stay at home and work. The father’s answer always was, “Edward, when you are older, you will always be sorry that you neglected your school.’’ The answer of the heart, though not expressed in words, was, “I know better.” I am not prepared to say that I have much feeling of regret for the loss of anything that possibly could be gotten out of those schools. I regard them as practically worthless. I really think it would have been better if my father had granted my request and kept me at home. I am inclined to the opinion that I got out of them all that was possible, and all that other boys did realize. The chief benefit one received came from contact. I often think that children get more of intellectual and spiritual growth from their plays and consequent contact than from their books and instruction. This part of my early training was abundant and efficient.

Preparing for College

At the turning point between youth and young manhood, a circumstance occurred that changed the plans of my whole life, and turned all my ambitions into an entirely new channel. When I was seventeen, Mr. Charles Huntington, just out of college, came to Perry Center and opened a private school. Into this school were gathered most of the young men and women of the town in the immediate vicinity. Here for the first time I became interested in books, and began to study.

Up to this time I had detested both books and the school, and as a consequence I had no intellectual equipment. My father had always urged me to go to school, and I had as persistently urged to be allowed to stay at home and work on the farm. All at once my father’s and my ideas were reversed. I had now come to an age when I could make myself very useful on the farm, and my father desired my services, and wanted to make a farmer of me … So now my father wanted me to stay at home on the farm just when I wanted to go to school.

College Life

During the winter months, I often spent an hour sawing wood out of doors, for which the college paid me fifty cents a cord. The pay was small, but it was something to a poor boy, and gave me healthful exercise, which paid better.

I felt to be a great compliment. This society was composed of the most scholarly and best elements in the college, and I did not hesitate to accept the honor proffered me. … my association with the members of this fraternity was of great value to me. I would not have lost the good that came to me through the close contact with the young men who composed this society, for any consideration. I value it above all other good I got out of my college life. They were strong men, possessed of high ideals and noble aspirations, and they brought into my life that which I never could get from the study of books. Among them were men who have taken high positions in the civil, religious, and literary world. I have always been proud of and thankful for their companionship.

Early in my college course I discovered something about myself that, curiously enough, I had never known before. I noticed that I could not see work on the board that other members of my class seemed to see readily. This led me to the suspicion that I was near-sighted. When convinced that this was true, I lost no time in bringing to my aid a pair of glasses. …On returning to College Hill, I went to the fourth story of one of the college buildings, to look out upon the world which I had never really seen before. …From that time to this, I was never without my glasses, except that at first when returning to my Perry home, I would doff them and put them in my pocket to avoid possible remarks from my good country friends.

The scholastic work in college was almost exclusively of a bookish character and confined very largely to the languages and mathematics. Very little was done in science, and that little was in Chemistry. It was pretty generally thought by the students that if we had our pictures taken by the professor of this department, paying for the same the sum of three dollars, we should be safe from rejection in this subject. For me this seemed the easiest and surest way out, and I had my picture taken. It was a daguerreotype, the only mode of taking pictures at that day, and it was then quite new. This picture is well preserved to this day. How much this transaction had to do with my passing out of Chemistry, no one will ever know, but of one thing I am certain, I got “out” of the subject without knowing anything about it; and my case was not different from that of most students.

Abandonment of College Course

… During my Sophomore year, while on a visit to Uncle Asa Austin’s at McGrawville, I had an attack of pleurisy, brought on by inordinate laughing. Instead of returning to college, as was my expectation, I was obliged to hasten home, where I was confined some months by this somewhat serious attack.

Early in the fall, Mr. J. W. P. Allen, a nurseryman from Oswego, came to Newburgh to purchase nursery stock, and he besought me to go to Oswego and take an interest with him in the nursery business which he had already established. … Abandoning my college and law-school plans, I went to Oswego in the fall of 1847 to enter upon my new enterprise.

[Eventually the business failed, and Sheldon was left without work or a place at school.]

The Ragged School: 1848-1849

During this period of suspense, it came into my mind to investigate the condition of the poorer classes in the city of Oswego. I accordingly invested five cents in a small blank book that I could carry in my pocket, decided upon the statistics I could gather, and began my rounds among the poorer tenements in the outskirts of the city. Among the items that interested me particularly was the educational status of the poor. Greatly to my surprise, I found fifteen hundred persons who could neither read nor write. As a country boy I had hardly known of such a person, and my astonishment may be well understood on finding such a degree of gross ignorance. To me it seemed like being in the midst of heathendom.

[Sheldon took his idea for a school to teach these children to the prominent citizens of the city.]

This resulted in the call for a meeting of a few prominent, benevolent, active citizens to consider plans of operation. The first meeting was held Tuesday, October 31, 1848. The result was the organization, on November 28, of the “Orphan and Free School Association.”

Extracts from a Letter to His Sister

Oswego, Nov. 23, 1848.

Thus it was settled that I was to take charge of the new “ragged school,” as it was dubbed. Nothing could ever have been farther from my thoughts than the idea of teaching school; nothing for which I considered myself so poorly adapted. …

Thus I found myself in the autumn of 1848 with one hundred twenty to one hundred thirty wild Irish and French boys and girls, in the basement of what was called the “Tabernacle,” a building that stood on West Second Street, near Bridge Street, on the site of the present engine house.

Many of these children had never been inside a schoolroom, and knew no better how to behave as pupils than I did as teacher. This was a strange school, with a no less strange teacher. None such had ever been assembled in Oswego.

One thing is surely true: if any principles of pedagogy were applied in this school, they were either intuitive or accidental. I had never read any theories of school teaching, and certainly had none of my own at the outset; at least, all my work was haphazard. About all I knew was that these children were poor, neglected, and ignorant, and needed sympathy and help; and these I certainly could give them. Of this I am also sure, I got their confidence and love. It was a usual sight on my way to school to have a large number of these poor children hanging on to the ends of my fingers and coat-tails, greatly to the amusement of the lookers-on.

MORE: Alumni, students to stage Sheldon stories

Marriage: 1849

In the spring of 1849, on the 16th of May, occurred the most important event of my life — that which had more to do with my success, my usefulness and happiness, than all other events combined. …This partner of my life did more to mold my character and make me what I have been and am, than all the other circumstances of my life.

[From 1851 to 1853, Sheldon held the position of Superintendent of Schools in Syracuse.]

Meantime, in Oswego, … the effort to secure free schools was bound to go on.

… The first board of education was organized May 11, 1853, and quite unsolicited by me and greatly to my surprise, I was elected clerk or secretary as the office was termed, the salary to be eight hundred dollars, with prospect of an advance.

I had formed a strong affection for Oswego, and some of its citizens in particular, a number of whom were in the Board. In Oswego I would have the advantage of organizing a system from the start, in accordance with my own views. … I resigned my position in Syracuse, and entered at once upon what proved to be my life-work in Oswego.

Notwithstanding all perfection of organization, and I think it would be very difficult to find anything more complete, there was something to give life, spirit I may say, soul to the school system. As a machine it was perfect, but it lacked vitality … We wanted something that would wake up the pupils, set them to thinking, observing, reasoning.

It must be more objective. But there were no facilities for carrying on such work. For this purpose we wanted collections of objects of all sorts, illustrations of every kind. We wanted more reading matter, and that which was better adapted to the ages of the children; we wanted charts of color and form, natural history, pictures, objects for teaching number, etc.

This was in September, 1859. A month later … I went on a tour of inspection to the schools of Toronto, Ontario. To my astonishment I found here very many of the facilities I had been wishing for. Here I found, greatly to my surprise, what I did not know existed anywhere — collections of objects, pictures, charts of colors, form, reading charts, books for teachers, giving full directions as to the use of this material.

I invested three hundred dollars in these pictures, objects and books, and hastened home a happier man than I went. I was not long in making out a new course of study for my Primary schools, introducing a complete course of objective work, employing the material brought from Toronto.

A new era had come to our public schools. Important changes were being inaugurated that were destined to revolutionize methods of teaching not only in Oswego, but in the whole country.

At one time our little home came very near being buried in the snow. It was in the winter of 1853. It was late one Saturday night, after my duties as librarian were over and I had closed my office, that I started for home in a heavy snowstorm …

This proved to be the severest snowstorm that has been known in Oswego since that day. The storm continued for three days with unabated fury, filling the streets with snow and obstructing all travel. Practically all business was suspended. The schools were closed. Neither teachers nor pupils could get to them. I did not, in fact, could not, leave my house for three days. I got out of the chamber window into a plum tree that stood near, and shoveled off the snow to prevent the accumulating weight of it from breaking the tree to pieces. At the end of three days I went out the back door, and coming around to the front gate dug a tunnel to the front door, and through this tunnel we passed out and in for many days. At this time I saw some of the smaller houses literally buried in the snow, with hardly more than a chimney to show the existence of a house.

… Such snowstorms, however, were not frequent. They were the exception, and have become more and more rare since that day.

Establishment of the Teacher Training School

I proposed to the board that we should establish a city training school for the training of primary teachers. … giving them one year of strictly professional training. One half of the time was to be given to a discussion of educational principles and their application to teaching the elementary branches, and the other half to teaching under criticism.

The next question was, who should be the teacher of this Oswego Primary Teachers’ Training School, as I decided to call it. … No such school existed in America, and the methods of instruction were quite as new as the design of the school. In this dilemma I decided to go abroad for a teacher. In London, England, was the Home and Colonial Training Institution. Although organized on a different plan from my own, it was training teachers on Pestalozzian principles. … Miss Margaret E. M. Jones, who had been a teacher with them for eighteen years, had consented to come at a salary of one thousand dollars and all living expenses. This seemed to our board a very large sum to pay, and they hesitated. But I said to them: “If you will appoint this woman, I will guarantee to the board that it shall not cost the city one cent,” and on the strength of this they offered the resolution, being careful to put into it my guarantee that “it should not cost the city one cent.”

I was careful to keep my word with them, and showed them at the end of the year that Miss Jones had not only been no expense to them, but had actually put into the treasury three hundred dollars over and above expenses. It was done in this way. In the first place I charged a tuition of fifty dollars to all persons not residents of Oswego who joined the class. In the second place I persuaded a number of the more progressive teachers to contribute one-half of their salary for the year, in view of the benefit that would come to them from the instructions of the “London Training Teacher.” In the third place, by converting one of the schools into a school of practice, I saved the salary of one teacher. In this way I made the training school a help rather than a hindrance to the finances of the board.

This movement was going on in the spring of 1861, and in May the school was opened with Miss Jones at the head.

In the regular training class were nine pupils. Miss Jones met her class for special instruction and direction in a small cloakroom off from the school of practice. The accommodations were very limited, and so was the class.

In addition to the regular school of practice, we had one model school, used exclusively as a school of observation, and one school taught successively by the members of the training class. These schools were in the Academy building. This was the first Teachers’ Training School ever organized in America. They are now to be found in nearly every populous city, but I have yet to learn that any radical improvement has been made on the “Oswego Training School.”

It was at this time that the question arose as to who should be principal of this training school when Miss Jones should leave. … When Miss Jones heard of my proposition to make Mr. Weller principal, she went to the members of the board and stoutly protested, insisting that Mr. Sheldon should be made principal. … I was thus made Miss Jones’ successor-a position to which I did not aspire, and for which I seemed to myself to have no suitable qualifications.

The new movement was quite revolutionary in its character. The ordinary processes of education were reversed. From the old methods — of words first and ideas afterwards — to the new — ideas first, words afterwards — the change in the character of school work was a marked one.

Reputation and Influence of the School

Many representative educators from different parts of the country, and teachers from every grade were from time to time visitors to the training school and the public schools. Many of the most competent graduates of the school had been invited to different cities to organize city training schools on the plan of the Oswego Training School, and to State Normal schools to organize training departments in connection with schools of practice.

In 1866-67 six additional state normal and training schools were established in New York State, all on the general plan of the Oswego school, only that the courses of study were considerably enlarged.

The Oswego school was organized on a different plan from any other normal school in the country, in that it had a full year of professional work with a large school of practice sufficient to give an opportunity for all the members of the graduating class to teach at least five months under criticism.

A distinguishing feature of our school from the beginning has lain in our constant endeavor to emphasize the purely professional side of the training, and to exclude, as far as practicable, the academic lines of work.

We have also a manual training course which is optional … We have a shop finely equipped for this work, which is under the supervision and direction of Mr. Piez, who is remarkably competent.

The Death of Sheldon

He spoke of dying as though it were an every-day occurrence, and passed peacefully away at 8:30 a.m. (August 26th, 1897).

A Memorial Exercise, to which all the Alumni and others were invited, was held at the school, October 21, 1897.

The Alumni further planned raising a fund to establish a Sheldon scholarship in pedagogy at Cornell University, which through the generosity of an Alumna has been completed.

The most prominent memorial that has been erected to the memory of Dr. Sheldon, consists in the bronze statue that stands in the Capitol at Albany, which was unveiled on January 11th, 1900.

This statue was the contribution of the school-children and educators of New York State…

3,007 schools, numbering about 200,000 children, responded to the appeal. From their penny contributions, and the larger ones of educators, about $3,500 was raised, of which $3,000 was paid to the sculptor, the remainder being disbursed for incidental expenses.

The statue was executed by John Francis Brines … Governor Roosevelt unveiled the statue.

The nurseryman Edward Austin Sheldon would probably liken it to the seeds of the maple tree propelled by the wind.

Whatever metaphor is used, one thing is certain: The Oswego Method of learning by doing spread far and wide, thanks in large part to the work of alumni ambassadors who travelled the nation and world to share the founder’s principles.

“Many of the most competent graduates of the school had been invited to different cities to organize city training schools on the plan of the Oswego Training School, and to State Normal schools to organize training departments in connection with schools of practice,” Sheldon wrote in his autobiography.

Jennie Stickney carried the Oswego method to Boston. Sheldon called her “a sort of pioneer missionary for the new methods.”

Amanda Funnelle 1862 taught at the state Normal School at Terre Haute, Ind., and later helped organizing a training school in Detroit. Her travels would take her all over the country before she returned to Oswego to serve as principal of the kindergarten-training department.

Mary V. Lee 1863 and Mary McGonegal 1863 went to Davenport, Iowa, to start a city training school. Lee would go on to teach at the State Normal School at Winona, Minn., after which time she took a medical course and returned to Oswego to head the department of physiology and physical culture. Lee Hall, an athletic facility, is named for her.

Sheldon tells of graduates starting schools in Worcester, Mass., Portland and Lewiston, Maine, Paterson, N.J., and Dayton and Cleveland, Ohio.

Graduates weren’t the only ones spreading Sheldon’s system.

“Many representative educators from different parts of the country, and teachers from every grade were from time to time visitors to the training school and the public schools,” the founder noted.

William Phelps, the first principal of the New Jersey State Normal School in Trenton, now The College of New Jersey, led a delegation invited by Sheldon “to investigate the suspicious proceedings going on in the thriving lake port.”

Phelps would take the Oswego Method back to New Jersey, as well as to Minnesota, where he was to work after his New Jersey tenure. Oswego’s connection with TCNJ is still strong. Dr. R. Barbara Gitenstein, former Oswego provost, current president of TCNJ, was at Oswego from 1984 to 1991.

“From what I have said it will be seen that the Oswego school has had an important influence on the normal school system of this and other States. This influence was particularly felt in western and southwestern States, notably in Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and California,” Sheldon wrote.

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When Oswego founder Edward Austin Sheldon built Shady Shore in 1857, he meant it to be a family home. For President Deborah F. Stanley and her family, it has been just that for the past 13 years.
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In fact, when the family was moving from the comfortable home they had built on the west side of Oswego, the president and her husband, attorney Michael Stanley, were concerned about how long it would take their daughters Paige and Jacquelyn, then 12 and 10, to adjust to life in the historic homestead.

“It took about three days,” President Stanley said with a laugh.

The girls soon found that their friends from the old neighborhood wanted to visit their new home. “Large numbers of children would gather here, even through the girls’ high school years,” she added.

Shady Shore has been a regular site for grown-up gatherings as well. Since it is an official college building, the president frequently hosts receptions and events there. She enjoys holding buffet dinners attended by faculty and staff from across campus, giving them the opportunity to mingle with colleagues and members of the community.

MORE: ‘Ideal site’ for a home

“It’s a very welcoming home, and we use every part of it,” President Stanley said. Even the stone porch and vast lawns become a place to host visitors. “Any time we have an opportunity and a group that will fit into Shady Shore, we invite them here. We know people are curious about it.”

Alumni especially love to visit, and during Reunion Weekend, the president opens her doors to the 50th and 25th year classes as well as volunteer Reunion planners. In one of the most moving moments at each Reunion, Golden Anniversary class members gather on the lawn at Shady Shore to remember classmates who have passed away as they light a candle in each one’s memory.

Living right on campus offered opportunities for the whole Stanley family to interact in the life of the college. The family would attend plays, concerts and sporting events, and enjoyed walks and bike rides on campus roadways. Even though the girls are grown and living in Washington, D.C., the president and her husband still enjoy biking the campus byways together.

“Our family feels special about being here,” President Stanley said. “It’s casual and comfortable, and always a welcoming home, but we never ignore the fact that it’s a big privilege to live here. We hope we are good stewards.”

MORE: ‘Sisterhoods of Space’

She remembered her days as a faculty member, when she and Michael were invited to visit Shady Shore by former President Stephen L. Weber and his wife, Susan. “We never imagined we would be living here,” she said. “Certainly not for 13 years … and hopefully more to come.”

The awe at living in the founder’s home spans the generations of the Stanley family. Michael Stanley’s parents grew up in Oswego, and his father always wanted to see the whole home, which was an iconic building for him. “We were delighted that he got the opportunity to experience that,” the Stanleys said.

Situated on the lakeshore and surrounded by trees, many planted by Sheldon, a nurseryman before he founded the college, Shady Shore offers a great opportunity to enjoy nature.

“My favorite part of the home is the grounds,” said Michael Stanley. “The house is wonderful and comfortable, but the property is so spectacular.”

“For a few years we strung a hammock between two trees out on the north side of the house,” said President Stanley. “It was a great vantage point to enjoy the lake.”

It’s also a great spot to observe wildlife. Foxes, raccoons, squirrels and chipmunks make their home in the vegetation, and deer are born occassionally on the front lawn. “We will see a little brown ball and then … a head pops up,” said the Stanleys.

Living in the historic home has spawned a number of family traditions the Stanleys would not have enjoyed elsewhere.

Food, fun and family times are especially important around the holidays. The Stanleys have forged wonderful holiday memories at Shady Shore, gathered around a huge 10-foot Christmas tree in the front living room, decorated with Stanley family ornaments. Usually joining in the festivities are children Jennifer and Joseph and their families, too.

Every summer, the Stanleys set up chairs along the shoreline and invite family and friends to watch the fireworks during Harborfest weekend.

Living in a public building can have its challenges for
children. The girls were always given the choice to opt in or out of gatherings in their home. One day Jackie, arriving home from a soccer game, joined in the buffet line, cleats and all.

Another time, Paige got an unpleasant surprise when the steam from her shower set off a fire alarm. She was shocked to find firefighters from several departments on her front doorstep within minutes.

The most spectacular place in the house, both Stanleys agreed, is the front library. Decorated in Arts and Crafts furnishings, its walls hung with historical photos and family portraits and floors covered with Oriental rugs from the
Stanleys’ own collection, it’s Michael Stanley’s favorite spot for reading the morning newspapers. “The view of the lake and the grounds from its windows is magnificent,” he said.

He has a spotting scope, which he uses to watch ships coming in to the harbor.

President Stanley was quick to address a Shady Shore FAQ. “The house is definitely not haunted,” she said with a laugh. But reminders of the founder are everywhere. A pair of marble-topped tables dates from when he lived in the house as do a couple of chairs and family portraits.

The president loves to point out Sheldon’s picture at the front entrance going up the stairs. “His portrait is a watchful presence,” she said.

Whether his presence is real or symbolic, the founder would probably smile to know that his family homestead continues to be a place where family members gather to enjoy the everyday and special moments of their lives, while sharing the historic space with the wider Oswego family.

Across a century and a half, the progeny of two presidents — Mary Sheldon Barnes 1868, daughter of Oswego’s Founder Edward Austin Sheldon, and Paige Stanley, daughter of current President Deborah F. Stanley — connected in their love for Shady Shore and their homesickness for the old homestead.

Mary wrote in Sheldon’s autobiography about times the children would accompany their parents out to work on the family farm in Perry, N.Y. “Yet we were always glad to get back to our ‘dear old Lake’ Ontario, with its murmurs and its thunders — last sound at night and first sound in the morning — with its world of changing color and its glorious sunsets. That lake and sky have often seemed to bear us up, away from the common world into realms of purest aspiration. Some of us, when away from home, have been stricken with actual, serious homesickness for them,” Mary wrote.

In law school in Washington, D.C., Paige felt that same homesickness. While searching the Internet for information about her home, she came across a piece Mary had written and felt compelled to answer her. “I wrote the letter to Mary in a bout of homesickness for the house and the lake to remind myself that the goal isn’t to remain in the same moment that first ignited in me a desire for learning and knowing more about the world, but it’s to take that desire out with me into the world to be that spark for others,” Paige wrote.

“Knowing how Mary felt about the house and about Oswego, and also knowing that she did most of her life’s work far from home helps to remind me that though my roots are planted firmly on the shore of Lake Ontario, I have a responsibility to take what I’ve learned here with me out into the world and contribute my voice to the marketplace of ideas.”

Here are the letters of the two presidential daughters.

Mary Sheldon wrote:

“I can remember just the hour when the endless wish to know awoke — that divine energy which urges us to mingle with the greater world without.

Just a child, with mother’s arm about me, I stood in the little dormer window of my room, looking up and out at the clear dome of stars, that rose from Lake Ontario to the zenith.

There glimmered the softly sparkling milky way, single stars, splendid and intense, drew the space from point to point — but best of all, I loved groups of stars, the sisterhoods of space, and best of these, again, the three strong stars of Orion’s belt.

The stars are all worlds, are all suns — like our world, like our sun, said my mother softly.

All those stars? All worlds?

And through the infinite spaces swept an infinite life that swept my soul upward and outward with it, in an infinite longing to know the bright worlds, every one.

So in a moment, the mind awoke to its energy and joy.”

Paige Stanley’s reply:

Dear Mary,

Generations after you awoke to yourself while gazing out into the expanse and loveliness of a Lake Ontario night sky, I started on my own journey to myself in the same place. My bedroom window in Shady Shore looks out to the lake as yours did. It is, perhaps, the same room and the same window. Much has changed in our house over the years not least of which, I imagine, is the view. A vast maple tree now stands insistent outside my window. It might be just old enough to have been the sapling that you could once peer down at from this perch. In the winter, when its branches are sparse, I look straight out to the lake, and each night I am lulled to sleep by the sound of the waves as you must have been. Though the lake is expansive and ever-present here, I have always considered it a companion to only me; a relationship born of sustained and mutual contemplation over the years.

Is it strange to think of your words as a private letter to me across decades? Is it stranger still to think that your journey, your self, and your story have influenced my journey, self, and story? Our unity of place, even though not of time, still links us. We are both daughters of this lake, this school, this house, and perhaps this room. This place sparked in you a desire for learning that you cultivated and carried out into the world. That same spark took root in me here. And from this place I carry it upward and outward in an effort to do that which you have done for me and countless others. Pass it on. “Through the infinite spaces swept an infinite life that swept my soul upward and outward with it, in an infinite longing to know the bright worlds, every one.” It is an endless wish to know. Endless, I think, in that not only does it spur each of us onward, it is continually passed from soul to soul as a gift.

Whether it’s actually crafted from the melted pennies donated by New York’s schoolchildren — as college lore has it — or paid for by their collected coins, the statue dates back to 1899. It depicts Sheldon instructing a small child, using the Oswego Method of object teaching. The founder holds a sphere, which was one of the objects that made up the tool kit of instructors in the Pestalozzian Method, which Sheldon popularized among American educators.

The statue was created by sculptor John Francis Brines and stood in the State Capitol in Albany until 1922, when it came to campus. It has moved over the years, from the front hall of Old Main to its lawn, from storage in the 1980s to “Sheldon Park” between Hewitt Union and Culkin Hall after refurbishment
as the 1985 Senior Class Gift, but wherever it stands, the founder’s statue remains a symbol of the institution. Generations of co-eds have claimed a seat on Sheldon’s lap and Oswego’s 75,000 alumni have waited patiently for the “apple” to drop.

Q. Why is experiential learning important, especially in the
current economy?

A. It provides learners with valuable opportunities to apply knowledge to real solutions. In the current economy, students want tangible experiences to differentiate themselves in decreasing job markets and increasing competition. Most employers seek individuals with broad and field specific knowledge, experiential learning offers students the added opportunity to demonstrate higher-level competencies such as critical thinking and problem solving.

Q. Oswego has a history of hands-on learning. How have we evolved?

A. Founder Edward Austin Sheldon’s learning philosophy continues to serve as an inspiration to the college based on the philosophy and practice that students learn best by doing. Experiential education has been a formal part of the academic curricula dating back to Sheldon; today it extends across a broad range of subject areas and disciplines. As our understanding of learning theories and cognitive development increases, more faculty recognize the benefit of offering students opportunities to learn through direct experiences. Since 2000 we have observed a more than 200 percent increase in service learning by our students.

Q. What are some new initiatives?

A. Our new software engineering program provides hands-on experiences designed to combine the principles of inquiry with group process. Students interface with business on real-world, industry-relevant projects and work as part of a team under the supervision of a faculty member and a practicing engineer. The Global Laboratory, a distinctive research abroad program, offers students an opportunity to conduct scientific research on cutting-edge subjects. Mentored by skilled scholars in leading universities across the globe, students can positively affect the people and
local communities where the research
is conducted.

Q. What’s in the future?

A. I see an increasing demand from students and a thoughtfully engaged faculty wanting to bring learning alive through internships, service learning, field work, and cooperative education where students alternate classroom study with practical work experience. We plan to expand contextual learning as an instructional strategy to more students by making connections to alumni, businesses and community organizations interested in challenging students with problem solving in real-world settings.