Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, has announced a $2 million gift from alumna Suzanne Salter Arkin to create a fund to support students studying the sciences.

The Suzanne Salter Arkin Science Endowment will be dedicated to attracting outstanding science students who want to pursue a serious course of study in the sciences while engaging with the arts, humanities, language, literature, and the social sciences. The fund also will be used to expand internal and external research opportunities for undergraduates, enhancing the college's reputation as an institution offering a noteworthy science curriculum, in part through a program that provides summer externship support for selected undergraduates who have excelled in the sciences and embarked on significant research while on campus.

"While the college is well known for the arts and humanities, our pedagogy, which gives students research experience from day one, is also particularly well suited for the sciences," said Kanwal Singh, the school's dean. "The new program will allow us to fund more students to do research on campus and progress into the externships in laboratories at major hospitals, research organizations, educational institutions, and companies that are concentrated in the New York area."