Health and wellness were as important to President Beilock as maintaining an academically resilient campus. As a result, the College launched a new health and wellness initiative in 2019 — Feel Well, Do Well @ Barnard — to help students thrive both inside and outside the classroom. The creation of the Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being at Barnard, made possible by a generous gift from the Francine A. LeFrak Foundation, will become the official hub for wellness initiatives on campus.
The Francine LeFrak Center will include state-of-the-art spaces for financial fluency and wellness programs, a fitness center, and dance spaces. By uniting initiatives that address the many dimensions of student health and wellness — physical, mental, and financial — the College can offer students holistic well-being support that propels success.
“As an undergraduate student who experienced two years of [academics] under COVID — [and] examining everything from a lens of social well-being, mental well-being, emotional well-being, and academic well-being of students — I’m very grateful I got to be a student under President Beilock’s leadership,” said Madeleine Morales ’22, MSPH ’23, a 4+1 student studying health policy and management.
As a result of President Beilock’s leadership, Barnard has built a stronger foundation today to weather the unexpected. “We must continue to build on the momentum generated during the Year of Science — and in highlighting Barnard’s eminence across the arts, humanities and social sciences — in our engagement with the city around us, and in connecting a Barnard education to life beyond graduation,” she wrote in her announcement to community members about stepping down.
“One of the things that Sian did so well was extrapolating from her broad understanding of the College as a premier liberal arts college that is highly competitive [and] part of a great University [that] at the same time [is] independent,” said Ellen V. Futter ’71, fifth president of Barnard College. In addition, Futter said, President Beilock also understood “the role of Barnard in the City and the opportunities that the City presents for maximizing student internships, faculty research opportunities, and engaging with the communities in the city for the benefit of the whole Barnard community.”
With a full heart, the entire Barnard College community says thank you to President Beilock and wishes her much success in her new, groundbreaking role at Dartmouth.
President Beilock With Students Over The Years
