Centers and initiatives make it possible for you to put your education into practice. Through hands-on learning and real-world projects, you will gain the skills and experience needed to thrive in an ever-changing world.
Explore what it means to express yourself through poetry, be inspired through readings by renowned poets, and craft your own verses at The Boutelle-Day Poetry Center.
Blend your cross-disciplinary knowledge and experiences in support of environmental decisions and actions with the Center for the Environment, Ecological Design, and Sustainability.
Assess the interconnectedness of people, planet, and profit when developing your solutions to pressing problems through the Conway Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center.
Question gender, race, ethnicity, power, and ability as dynamics that shape who gets to participate in creating the worlds in which we live with the Design Thinking Initiative.
Engage with international and intercultural issues to cultivate an understanding of the global context of a Smith education at the Lewis Global Studies Center.
Unlock your leadership capacities through workshops, programs, and talks geared toward creating equitable and thoughtful leaders at the Wurtele Center for Collaborative Leadership.
In Practice
Human Rights Initiatives
For the Reproductive Justice Futurisms Think Tank II (March 4–6, 2026), Amelie Horn ’25 organized and moderated “Passing the Torch: Tending the Flame: Youth Talk the Present and Future of Reproductive Justice.” The national panel of youth leaders discussed their role in building just reproductive futures, exploring collisions between reproductive justice and their digital lives including censorship, social media algorithms, and surveillance. Panelists emphasized the value of collective knowledge production, intergenerational coalition-building, and international solidarity.
Wurtele Center for Collaborative Leadership
Students in SDS 410, the capstone course for Statistics & Data Science, collaborate in teams on projects sponsored by academia, government or industry to address a real-world data analysis problem. The Wurtele Center for Collaborative Leadership supports student teams as they navigate the complexities of working with peers and sponsors through in-class workshops and regular check-in sessions.
Conway Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center
Katherine Metzger ’26 found a home at the Conway Center in her first year through interterm entrepreneurship courses. She spent the next three years in The Hatchery and as a Co-Innovate for Change Challenge (now the Conway Challenge) participant. Conway’s entrepreneurial student community helped her to scale her venture to five-figure profitability. Katherine said: “As my business grew, Conway programming built my financial literacy confidence—empowering me to invest while in college and buy my own home immediately after graduation.”
