The World Needs Mount Holyoke Women Building a Global Community


When Nancy Lewin Sun ’80 arrived on campus as a first-year student, she brought with her an extraordinarily broad worldview. Born in Uruguay to U.S. citizens, Sun grew up in Trinidad, Brazil, and Spain. It was during high school in Madrid that a friend of her mother’s told her about Mount Holyoke College. “In truth, I wasn’t aware of


Mount Holyoke’s longstanding international diversity when I applied,” says Sun, who majored in psychology and Spanish. “What attracted me was the College’s incredibly strong academic reputation.” Mount Holyoke’s leadership


in linking liberal arts excellence with global awareness has particularly inspired Sun’s work on the Annual Fund Committee, as well as her gifts to the Annual Fund Scholars Program. “Through that program, alumnae can provide a one-year named scholarship to a student with demonstrated need. I see this as a chance to help Mount Holyoke prepare a new generation of women to take on meaningful global leadership roles.” Currently living in Hong Kong with her


husband and two of their three daughters (their eldest is a freshman at Bowdoin College), Sun believes that solutions to this century’s toughest problems can only be tackled and resolved by globally aware and concerned people working collaboratively. “Coming together and learning from each other


is what happens daily at Mount Holyoke,” says Sun. “When I tell people that over 20 percent of the College’s students come from nearly 70 countries, they’re genuinely astonished,” she says. Though the international


population was considerably smaller during Sun’s time on campus, she says that Mount Holyoke was ahead of its time in emphasizing the need to communicate across cultural boundaries and biases. “In recent years, so many colleges have been trying to position themselves as global,” she says. “But Mount Holyoke has set the standard for both culti- vating global competencies and understanding, and building a global community.”


When Sun thinks back to how she chose Mount


Holyoke “sight unseen,” she realizes she never anticipated the lasting friendships she’d develop or the common ground she’d share with women from around the world. “Because of Mount Holyoke, we all have the


ability to succeed in any environment. We know how to collaborate with other people regardless of where they are from or what their experiences have been. That’s a legacy worth supporting.”


For more information on the Annual Fund Scholars Program, please contact Kate Rindy, director of the Annual Fund, at knrindy@mtholyoke.edu or visit www.mtholyoke.edu/giving.


5 | Fact: More than 40 faculty were born internationally.


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