Due to recent retirements and conversion of a faculty member to administration, and high demand for our general and organic chemistry courses from students, we have need for new colleagues who can teach general and organic chemistry.

We are searching for colleagues who can (1) successfully teach in a supportive, equitable, and an inclusive manner (2) collaborate with colleagues to teach and contribute to the development of the courses they are hired to teach.

A PhD in chemistry, chemical education, or a related field is required for hiring at the visiting assistant professor level.

A master's degree in chemistry, chemical education , or a related field (including M.Ed. or M.A.T.) is required for hiring at the visiting instructor level.

The required materials are as follows:

• Cover letter –The letter should concisely summarize your qualifications for the advertised position, which will be expanded upon in your C.V.; why you are interested in the position; briefly overview your teaching interest especially in an undergraduate liberal arts setting; and how you will effectively engage with a diverse student body as a teacher.
• Curriculum Vitae –The C.V. should highlight all your qualifications for the position. In addition to your degrees earned, positions held and employment history, teaching experiences, publications, presentations, awards, and funding, please do include any other experiences, backgrounds, and expertise you find relevant for the advertised position especially if they relate to supporting a diverse, equitable, and inclusive educational community. These could include:
  • expertise in diversity, equity, and inclusion
  • service to your department, college, field, and or community
  • professional development (trainings, workshops, classes, and or conferences attended related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, teaching, mentoring and advising, scientific outreach and communication, science policy, writing grant proposals, managing a group, etc.)
  • experiences and expertise mentoring and advising students
  • leadership roles
  • science policy experiences and expertise
  • experiences and expertise in scientific outreach and communication
• A statement of teaching philosophy that explains how the applicant will effectively teach, mentor, and engage with a diverse population of students in an inclusive manner, informed by their teaching expierience and training, and denotes courses they are interstedin teaching
• Copies of your undergraduate and graduate transcripts scanned into one PDF.
• Names, affiliations, and contact information of three professional references –References will be contacted at a later stage in the search process. They should be able to speak, with evidence, to your qualifications to teach in our curriculum in an equitable and inclusive manner and engage in service.

Both roles are full-time, non-tenure-track, and 9-month positions.   During the Fall and Spring semesters, faculty are expected to be available on campus for teaching as scheduled by the Department. Faculty have freedom to schedule their other duties and meetings as they see fit around their teaching schedule, but should generally expect to be on campus each day.  

Faculty are not required to be on campus during winter and summer break, but they are welcome to do so and will have office space available to them year round during their employment.

More information on titles and ranks at Skidmore are described in the faculty handbook.

These positions are not renewable, meaning that the  we cannot guarantee to employ someone hired into these positions beyond the contract length noted in the job ad.

Tentative timeline. We will update this page as warranted.  Last updated October 28

The campus interview typically lasts less than one day, including the following.  

• Meetings with faculty members on the search committee (40-50 minutes, either with individual faculty members or pairs of faculty members). 
• Teaching demonstration (25 minutes with 10 additional minutes for questions) Candidates will be informed well in advance about the topic and about the room the demo will take place in, relevant sections of textbooks, what level to aim for, and what knowledge you can assume the students have.
• Lunch with a group of students (1 hour, chemistry majors and minors)
• Meeting with the Associate Dean of Faculty for Diversity and Faculty Affairs, Janet Casey (30 minutes).
• Meeting with the Associate Director of Environmental Health and Safety, Kara Cetto Bales (30 minutes).
• Dinner with search committee members 
• An exit interview with the Department Chair, Juan Navea (30-40 minutes).

Skidmore College requires all students and employees to be vaccinated, including  boosted, unless exempt due to a medical accomodation or a sincerely held religious belief. Currently, 98% of students and 98% of employees are vaccianted. When the local area is at the CDC low or medium community level, Skidmore is mask supportive but optional. However, faculty members may require masking in classes, laboratories, and their offices. Staff members may also require masking in their offices and students in their own rooms. Masks are also required in Health Services and the Counseling Center, and for indviduals on days 6-10 following testing positive for COVID-19. Students and employees with disabilities can also request reasonable accomodations. We will update this information in accordance with changes to Skidmore's COVID-19 policies.

For your visit, our COVID-19 protocols will be at least as strict as those required by Skidmore College at the time of your visit, but we will also discuss with you prior to your visit your preferences with respect to masks and indoor dining.

We know how busy everyone is and the added stress that reference letters can add to the process. We also know that letters can add bias to the search process. Accordingly, we do not ask for reference letters (aka letters of recommendation). Please do NOT have reference letters sent to us. We will not read them. Instead, we ask that you provide the names and professional contact information for three professional references. We may contact them at a later stage in the search process.

• The general chemistry role will be primarily teaching in our general chemistry lecture and laboratory courses (CH 125 Principles of Chemistry),  for your teaching load of 18 contact hours per academic year (please see below for more details).
• The organic chemistry role will be primarily teaching in our organic chemistry lecture and laboratory courses (CH 221/222 Organic Chemistry I and II),  for your teaching load of 18 contact hours per academic year (please see below for more details).

Please see Department Courses for course descriptions.

Skidmore is on the semester system, (i.e., there are two semesters per academic year). All full-time faculty members teach 18 contact hours per academic year (average 9 contact hours per semester). Typically, this means each semester you will teach 2 or 3 sections.

Contact hours are defined by how many scheduled hours per week you meet with students for a class. For example, a section of CH 125 lab meet for 3 hours each week, so that constitutes 3 of your contact hours towards your 18 for the year.     A section of organic chemistry lab meets for 4 hours each week, so that constitutes 4 of your contact hours towards your 18 for the year.

You can be asked by the Department to teach an overload, meaning teaching more than 18 contact hours per year.  You do not need to do this.   If you accept the offer, you will be paid at the part-time faculty rate, currently $2200/contact-hour, for all hours over 18.

Lab sections have a cap of 16 students, which is the maximum capacity of the laboratory space.

Lecture sections have caps of 28 students for general chemistry (100-level) and 24 students for organic chemistry (200-level).

No. General and organic chemistry students must enroll in both lecture and lab at the same time. For grading purposes, they are considered one course.

Teaching during the summer is sometimes possible, for extra pay.  You opt-in for summer teaching; you are not ever required to do it.  

Non-tenure track faculty on visiting contracts, including the roles advertised here, are not expected to engage in service to the College.     They may attend College faculty meetings and vote in these meetings.

Non-tenure track faculty on visiting contracts, including the roles advertised here, are not expected to engage in service to the Department with the exception of attending department faculty meetings once a month.

If you are interested, you can optionally choose to engage in departmental service.  We have six standing department committees (Curricular Assessment, Safety, Awards, Department Event Planning, Instrumentation & Capital Requests, and Equity, Inclusion, Justice, and Accessibility) that meet about 1-4 times per semester. Additional responsibilities as needed are taking part in ad hoc committees,  supporting the chair and associate chair in ACS accreditation (every six years) and departmental self-studies (every ten years), and personnel decisions (optional for non-tenure-track faculty). Additional roles can also include overseeing the Chemistry Placement Diagnostic or the department webpage as desired.

•  You will have a private, furnished office with computer (choice of Mac or PC). The College has site licenses for software including ChemDraw, MS Office Suite (Word, Power Point, Excel, OneNote, and Outlook), Keynote, Pages, Numbers, Box, Adobe Creative Suite, Mathematica, Gaussian, R-Studio, and SPSS.
• In the annual departmental operating budget, $500 are set aside for each faculty member to cover societal memberships, buying books, paying for subscriptions, and other professional obligations and development. Additional funding can be requested.
• In the Dean of Faculty’s Office, the Travel to Read/Travel to Represent program funds a faculty member up to $1,800 a year for professional travel (e.g., to conferences). The funding covers travel, registration, hotel, and meals. Additional funding can be requested.
• Internal grants to fund collaborative research projects with students during the summer (student stipend, faculty stipend, student room & board, and small amount for supplies). The Chemistry Department is building a departmental endowment to also help fund summer collaborative research with students. 
• Scribner Library Open Access Grant Fund to help pay for open access publication fees.
• Scribner Library has access to a wide range of chemistry journals including those published by ACS.
• Faculty development and initiative grants provide support to faculty to begin new projects or enhance current work (curricular pedagogy and scholarship).
• Skidmore College has an institutional membership to the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR), which enables faculty members to join for free.

• Intergroup Relations (IGR) provides workshops for faculty members to address racial conflict and other diversity related issues in the classroom as well as on campus and in their lives. Three chemistry faculty members have taken part in IGR training.
• The Center for Leadership, Teaching, and Learning(CLTL) runs a New Faculty Learning Community to provide a mentoring network for new faculty members. 
• The CLTL also runs a number of pedagogy workshops and career discussions to help support faculty members. The CLTL also maintains a link to additional resources. Particular emphasis of the CLTL has been building an inclusive educational community on campus.
• The CLTL also has mini-grants to “support events and projects that seek to enhance diversity and inclusion-related pedagogical efforts within the Skidmore College community.”
• Scholarly and Creative Endeavors Work Groups provide a supportive community of scholars/practitioners across disciplines through the sharing of writing, research, and creative portfolios. Groups discuss scholarship and creative work at various stages of the process, successes and challenges in the classroom and in scholarship, leadership opportunities, career transitions, and mentoring. The CLTL pays for the groups to meet over lunch once a week.
• Sponsored Research Office supports developing, writing, and submitting grant proposals as well as managing funded proposals.
• Black Faculty/Staff Group strengthens the relationships amongst Black faculty and staff; builds community and outreach to students, educates and engages with the community on issues related to race, the Black experience, and anti-racism; develops relationships with Black community members off-campus, caucuses with other communities of color on campus, and strengthens relationships with allies.
• Faculty Handbook, and Faculty Development Handbook.

• Collaborative and supportive departmental environment.
• Clear departmental personnel policies and procedures 
• Departmental peer class observations focused on developing as a teacher.
• Departmental repository of practices and resources regarding diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and access.
• Paid student assistants to help prepare laboratory courses (e.g., make solutions, prepare small equipment, test protocols, etc.) and/or grade homework.

• Skidmore provides parental leave(birth parent/primary caregiver 1 paid semester off and non-birth parent/non-primary caregiver one course release).

The base salaries for faculty members are for the 9-month academic year (September-May) paid out biweekly over 9 months your first year (September-May) and over twelve months the subsequent years (June-May). Base salaries for new faculty members are determined by several factors including years of prior experience and market forces, especially for  in-demand fields. Skidmore does make public to the Skidmore community the minimum starting salaries for new faculty members. Recent hires in Chemistry typically have been hired with 9-month salaries above the minimum taking into account experience after earning their degree and the job market for chemists.   The expected salary range for the visiting assistant professor rank is $64,000-$68,000 per year. The expected salary range for the visiting instructor rank is $60,000-$68,000 per year.     Please discuss with the Department Chair, Juan Navea

Note – The College’s contributions towards retirement are on top of your base salary (see Retirement Benefits for more details) after a year of employment at Skidmore. If you are already participating in a retirement plan at a qualifying institution, the year employment requirement maybe waived. If you are under 50 years old, Skidmore contributes the equivalent to 11% of your base salary to your retirement plan. If you are 50 or older, Skidmore contributes the equivalent to 12% of your base salary towards your retirement. Employees are not required to contribute to the retirement plan but can if they so desire up to the maximum determined by the IRS each calendar year.

The College provides a number of competitive benefits to faculty and staff. The summaries below are for general information. Please read the HR Benefits pages for key details. Please also see the Domestic Partnership  Benefits Policy.

• Health Care Benefits
• Dental Benefits
• Life and Dependent Life Insurance
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Retirement Benefits– College contributes the equivalent to 10% (under 50) or 11% (50 or over) of the employee’s base salary towards the employee’s retirement plan and contributes an additional equivalent to 1% of salary towards the retirement plan in lieu of retirement health benefits (11% total if under 50, 12% total if 50 or older). The contributions are on-top of your base salary. Employees can contribute on top of the College’s contribution up to the limits set by the IRS. Employees are eligible for the contributions to the retirement plan after 1 year of employment; the year requirement may be waived if the employee worked previously at a post-secondary, degree-granting institution or a qualified research organization considered tax-exempt under code 501c(3) of the IRC, and the employee has participated in their previous employer’s 401(a), 403(a) or 403(b) basic retirement plan.
• Tuition Benefits(Internal– up to 100% of tuition cost for dependents attending Skidmore; Skidmore participates in the Tuition Exchange Program; and External Tuition Benefits)
• Faculty Parental Leave
• On-site childcare (spots do fill-up quickly)
• Free and green transportation optionsincludes free rides on Capital District buses with Skidmore ID and free bicycle rentals also available. Resources for arranging carpools. In addition, two of the campus parking lots have electric-vehicle chargers.
• Downtown Purchase Discounts
• Professional Development

Skidmore College is a selective, private liberal arts college founded on the principle of making connections between theory and practice, between the mind and the hand. Skidmore College started off as an all-women’s institution in downtown Saratoga Springs, NY. Skidmore moved to its current location on the northern edge of Saratoga Springs next to the North Woods in 1961 and began admitting men in 1971. Currently enrolling over 2,650 matriculated students, Skidmore is committed to teaching students to be active participants in our world who approach problem solving from particularly creative and interdisciplinary perspectives. An example of this educational paradigm is our Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, which has earned a national reputation for pushing beyond the boundaries of a traditional college museum to develop cutting-edge, exhibition-based pedagogies across the curriculum, including Molecules that Matter originated and co-curated by Ray Giguere in chemistry. Skidmore College’s slogan is Creative Thought Matters to “capture the central role that creativity plays on campus, not just in the arts but also in fields such as science, business, communications and the social sciences”.

The College employs 286 full-time faculty members and an additional 103 part-time faculty members with an 8:1 on-campus student to faculty ratio. Just over two-thirds of the full-time faculty members are tenure stream. The College’s 2005-2015 Strategic Plan laid out an ambitious goal of increasing the number of natural science majors by 50%. The College surpassed that goal with an increase of 90%. Currently, about one-third of all students major in the natural sciences at Skidmore. 

The College’s 2005-2015 Strategic Plan also called on Skidmore to diversify its student body along with its faculty and staff. It has been successful in those endeavors as well. In 2007, just 10% of the graduating class were domestic students of color and 1% were international students. Currently, 26% of students identify as domestic students of color, while 11% are international students. Over the same timeframe, the percent of graduates who were Pell-eligible increased from 11% to 19% of the student body. Currently, at least 16% are students with disabilities based on those who have contacted Student Access Services. Based on a recent HEDS survey, 32% of students are LGBQ+ and 2% are transgendered students. The College’s current Strategic Plan Creating Pathways to Excellence acknowledges we must do more than diversify our community; we also must be committed to “fully embrace our individual differences (e.g., personality, learning style, life experiences), as well as group and social differences (relating, e.g., to race or ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin, and ability, as well as cultural, political, religious, or other affiliations).” It is a call for inclusive excellence.

To that end, in 2020 the College started its Racial Justice Initiative and recently opened the Wycoff Center, "a dedicated space to discuss, collaborate and think creatively about equity and inclusion." Skidmore is a founding participant in the USC Race and Equity Center: Liberal Arts College Racial Equity Alliance (LACRELA). Skidmore was recently funded a three-year Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant on Africana Studies and the Humanities: Transnational Explorations in Social Justice. In addition, Skidmore is a member of of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Inclusive Excellence 3 Initative. As part of that initiative, Skidmore with 14 other institutions are embarking on a six-year $8 million grant, Empowering Institutions to Develop DEIJA-Centered Systems for Teaching and Learning, to engage in cycles of inquiry to develop processes i) to evaluate teaching with a DEIJA-centered focus and ii) for data-informed improvement of DEIJA decision making and outcomes. Chemistry faculty are heavily involved in the HHMI IE3 grant with Kim Frederick serving as the College's program director and Kelly Sheppard leading the data-informed project at Skidmore.

Staring with the entering class in 2020 (graduating class of 2024), students are under a new general education curriculum that puts a greater emphasis on integrative learning both within a major and across the liberal arts. The goal is for students to make meaningful and productive connections among the courses, ideas, and experiences of a liberal arts education by being more intentional in this process.  The new general education curriculum has four major components. 1) Integrations– moments where students are asked to be more reflective about their education and to make connections across disciplinary boundaries. The required integrative courses are the First Year Experience: Scribner Seminar, the Bridge Experience: Power & Justice, and the Senior Experience: The Coda. 2) Foundations– courses centered around developing the skills and competencies expected of a graduate with a liberal arts education. The required foundation courses are Applied Quantitative Reasoning, Global Cultural Perspectives, Language Study, and Writing. 3) Inquiries– courses centered on engaging students in particular approaches to studying our world and how we express ourselves. The required inquiry courses are Artistic Inquiry, Humanistic Inquiry, and Scientific Inquiry.  4) In the Major– a set of skills and literacies to be developed and refined through the major. The requirements in the major are communication (written and oral), technology literacy, visual literacy, and information literacy.

The Skidmore College Chemistry Department aspires to be a model of an equitable, inclusive, and accessible program that offers students a supportive and high-quality education in chemistry, integrated with the other liberal arts, for both majors and non-majors, and, in the context of being a primarily undergraduate institution, is productive in research that actively engages our students in our scholarship. We therefore fully embrace the teacher-scholar-mentor model as the hallmark of successful chemistry departments at small liberal arts colleges. Supporting each and every student through equitable and inclusive practices is an important departmental goal (please see our Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Statement and Action Items).  The Department is accredited by the American Chemical Society and we offer two majors, i) a Chemistry major and ii) a Chemistry major with a biochemistry concentration as well as a minor in Chemistry.   Please see our student learning goals as well.

Over the last few years, we have averaged 21 total majors per graduating class.  About 94% of our majors take part in collaborative research during their time at Skidmore.  After graduating, about 35% of our majors enter graduate programs in chemistry, biochemistry, or a related field. Another 31% enroll in graduate programs in health care, primarily medicine, while 8% choose other graduate programs including pursing an MBA or a JD. Of those who don’t pursue an advanced degree, they find employment in a wide range of positions in academia and industry as well as health care, sales, science education, and outreach.

Our majors mirror the diversity of the Skidmore student population if looking separately at race and gender with 25% of our majors being domestic students of color and 55% women. However, Black and Latina women are underrepresented as Chemistry majors compared to the College as a whole. In addition, our majors are more likely to be Pell-eligible than the overall Skidmore student body. With regards to S³M Scholars, a financial need-based scholarship for talented students interested in the natural sciences, about 8% of our majors are S³M Scholars compared to 3% of the students who major in the other natural sciences at Skidmore. Please read our Equity, Inclusion, and Justice statement and action items to see how we are supporting our diverse student body and seeking to do better.

We are currently comprised of 14 faculty members (7 tenure stream faculty, 2 instructors, 2 teaching professors, and 3 visiting assistant professors), covering the five main sub-disciplines of chemistry, plus two administrative assistants (shared with Biology) and an instrumentation manager (shared with SAIL). Many of our laboratory courses incorporate projects and have students design their own experiments in a cooperative fashion with their classmates. In the classroom, we use multiple active learning pedagogies including group work with worksheets such as Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL), pair-sharing, small group discussions, clickers, and Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL). Many of us also use pre-course reflections to learn about our students and to get the students to connect their personal values with what we teach in our courses. We incorporate Universal Design for Learning and differentiated learning approaches. We have also designed more inclusive syllabi to be transparent, to better highlight strategies and approaches for success, and to communicate that we care and are here for our students. To cut back on the costs of taking chemistry courses, many of us use open educational resources (OERs) in place of traditional textbooks, including Chemistry from OpenStax for our 100-level courses. In addition, we do NOT charge lab fees. 

We actively publish peer-reviewed articles with undergraduate co-authors and present at conferences with our students as well as fund our work through both external and internal grants.

Instrumentation and Equipment

The Department has multiple instruments for research and teaching including spectrometers (UV-vis, FTIR, Raman, and NMR), a GC, an HPLC, a gas sorption analyzer, a capillary electrophoresis system, a scanning spectrofluorimeter, an IC, microwave reactor, and a microwave sample digester as well as multiple rotary evaporators and typical other equipment (e.g., analytical balances, heat blocks, freezers, drying ovens, etc.) and glassware. The spaces are equipped with multiple fume hoods, including those that are ADA compliant, with one research space also having a new glove box. The recently purchased NMR spectrometer is a 400 MHz instrument with autosampler. The NSF funded SAIL has a GC-MS, an LC-MS, an FTIR, an atomic absorption spectrometer, an HPLC, an IC, an XRD, and XRF that are often used by members of the Department. Dr. Lisa Quimby serves as the instrument manager for both Chemistry and SAIL. SMIC houses a SEM, a TEM, two confocal laser scanning microscopes, and multiple light microscopes. Juan Navea and Kim Frederick were co-PIs of the College’s Sherman Fairchild funded proposal that is bringing in an additional $494,240 in new instrumentation to Skidmore College (2020-2025) including for a new Raman microscope and electron spin resonance spectrometer. The College uses the REMI Group to cover the costs associated with maintaining and repairing the instruments. The Department annually submits capital budget requests to purchase new equipment and instruments in addition to seeking external funding. The equipment and instruments are housed in the newly opened Center for Integrated Sciences (see next paragraph).

Center for Integrated Sciences

Skidmore has completed and is occupying the 118,000 square feet of new construction for the Center for Integrated Sciences (CIS), including the teaching and research spaces for the Chemistry Department (see next paragraph). The new construction wraps around the original Dana facility, which is now under renovation. Once the renovation of Dana is completed, the 10 Natural Science programs at Skidmore will be united in one modern, forward-thinking facility that has integrative learning and collaboration at the forefront with accessibility built-in and natural light to invite and welcome students into the sciences.

The Chemistry Department is located in the newly constructed wings of the CIS, so the Department is now entirely housed in modern spaces. Chemistry occupies the North (completed Summer 2020) and East Wings (completed Summer 2022) of the third floor of the CIS. The space in the North Wing includes the teaching laboratories for 100-level Chemistry courses (CH 115, CH 125, and CH 126) and synthetic chemistry (CH 221, CH 222, and CH 314) as well as the recently acquired 400 MHz NMR spectrometer with autosampler funded through a 2020 NSF MRI grant. The primary teaching lab for CH 125/6 is ~900 square feet plus a ~390 sq ft dry lab. There is an additional ~420 sq ft of space for lab course preparation shared with the teaching labs for CH 115 and Inorganic Chemistry (CH 314).

The Chemistry research spaces are in the East Wing along with faculty offices and the teaching laboratory for physical and analytical chemistry courses (CH 232, CH 332, and CH 333). The Skidmore Analytical Interdisciplinary Laboratory (SAIL), which houses several instruments used by Chemistry, is also very conveniently co-localized on the third floor of the East Wing with Chemistry.

The Chemistry spaces are designed with team and active, project-based teaching laboratories in mind (e.g., CUREs) including dry spaces for students to plan and discuss their lab work together. The Chemistry research labs in the East Wing are designed with collaborative research with students in mind to build community and encourage conversations while facilitating high-quality specialized research.

The research and teaching laboratories and offices for the two biochemists in the Chemistry Department are a floor below, on the second floor of the East Wing, to be co-localized with the faculty members on the molecular and cellular end of Biology and Neuroscience.

The third floor of the North Wing of the CIS also houses Mathematics & Statistics. Environmental Studies & Sciences is located on the second floor of the CIS (North and East Wings) along with the ecology and evolutionary biology spaces of Biology (North Wing), the Skidmore Microscopy Imaging Center (SMIC) (North Wing), and Computer Science (North Wing). On the first floor of the CIS is Geosciences (East Wing), the rest of Biology (North and East Wings), the animal facility (North Wing), the Machine Shop (East Wing), and the IDEA Lab (East Wing).

The final phase of the project to renovate the original Dana facility started this summer. Once completed (expected summer 2024), Physics will move from temporary space in the Annex to occupy the third floor of the renovated Dana facility. Psychology will move out of the Tisch Learning Center to also occupy the third floor of renovated Dana. Health & Human Physiological Sciences will move out of the Williamson Sports Center to occupy the second floor of the renovated Dana facility along with Neuroscience.

Saratoga Springs, New York
Skidmore College is located in Saratoga Springs, NY with a population of over 26,500, nestled in the foothills of the Adirondacks just 30 miles north of Albany, NY. Saratoga Springs ranks as one of the best college towns(Travel & Leisure) with one of “America’s Greatest Main Streets” (Travel & Leisure). Money Magazine has ranked it as one of the nation’s top 100 places to live. The downtown is full of restaurants (top five in the US for restaurants per capita), shops, spas, and hotels. Caffè Lena, where Ani DeFranco and Bob Dylan got their starts, is downtown with Congress Park and a number of the mineral springs the city became famous for during the 19^thcentury. The Saratoga Springs Farmer’s Market is downtown on Wednesdays and Saturdays (May-October) at High Rock Park. November-April, the Farmer’s Market moves indoors to the Lincoln Baths Building (Saturdays only). Just west of downtown lies the Beekman Street Arts District, which is home to additional restaurants, galleries, shops, and the historic Frederick Allen Lodge. 

A major draw during the summer are the horse races at the Saratoga Race Track. The races go from mid-July through Labor Day including the Travers Stakes. Beyond horse racing, a number of annual events are hosted in the local area throughout the year including Saratoga First Night, Chowderfest, Victorian Street Walk, Summer Concert Series, road races, restaurant week, and wine festivals. On the southern edge of the city, is Saratoga Spa State Park where the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) is located. SPAC is the summer home of the Freihofer’s Saratoga Jazz Festival, New York City Ballet and the Philadelphia Orchestra. SPAC also hosts a number of Live Nation Concerts(Rock, Country, and Hip Hop) and events for families. SPAC is also the location for Skidmore commencement ceremonies. Skidmore College’s Zankel Music Center also hosts a number of performances and events. Nearby is the Saratoga National Historic Park, site of the Battle of Saratoga, as well as Saratoga Lake. With the Adirondacks nearby, there are plenty of hiking opportunities. Lake George and Lake Placid are short drives away. For skiing, Whiteface and Gore mountains in New York are close-by as are Killington and Mount Snow in Vermont.

Capital District Metro Area
Saratoga Springs is part of the Capital District metropolitan area of about 1.2 million residents. Albany (the capital of the state of New York), Schenectady, and Troy form the Tri-City core of the region. The region boasts a number of museums, performance venues(e.g., the Egg, the Palace Theatre, Proctor’s Theatre, and the Times Union Center), and other attractions with a number of events throughout the year.  CDTA runs buses throughout the region, including a bus stop at Skidmore which is free to ride with a Skidmore ID. Professional sports teams that play in the area include the Tri-City Valley Cats (minor league baseball), the Albany Empire (National Arena League Football), and the Adirondack Thunder (ECHL hockey).

Albany International Airport  is served by a number of different carriers (United, Delta, Air Canada, Southwest, American Airlines, Allegiant, Frontier, and Jet Blue).  The Capital District is also served by Amtrak(stops in Rensselaer-Albany, Schenectady, and Saratoga Springs) with service to New York City and Montreal (Adirondack Service) as well as Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo and Niagara Falls (Empire Service), Boston and Chicago (Lake Shore Limited), and Toronto (Maple Leaf Service). Cities in the greater region are easily accessible within three hours by driving, including New York City to the south, Rochester to the west, Montreal to the north, and Boston to the east.

Other colleges and universities in the area include:

• Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
• Albany Law School
• Albany Medical College
• Clarkson University Capital Region Campus
• College of St. Rose
• Excelsior University
• Hudson Valley Community College
• Maria College
• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
• Russell Sage College
• Siena College
• SUNY-Adirondack Community College
  
• SUNY- Empire State College
  
• SUNY-Polytechnic Institute, Albany
  • Includes the AlbanyNanotech Complex, partneships include IBM, Global Foundries, Samsung, Applied Materials, Tokyo Electron, ASML, and Lam Research.
• SUNY-Schenectady Community College
• Union College
• University at Albany (SUNY)

Beyond the state government of New York and institutions of higher education, major employers in the region include:

• Adirondack Trust Company
• Albany Medical Center
• Curia Global (formerly AMRI)
• Ellis Medicine
• Global Foundries
• General Electric
• Knolls Atomic Power Laboratories
• Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
• Saratoga Hospital
• Saratoga Springs Water Company
• Stewart's Shops Headquarters
• St. Peter's Health Partners
  

• Skidmore Housing Forum
• Skidmore’s Local and Regional Cultural Resources Guide
• Relocating to Saratoga Springs
• Saratoga Springs Real Estate and Rentals
• Transportation
• Capital Region Visitors Guide
• Albany/Capital Region Seasonal & Specialty Guides
• Lodging in Saratoga Springs and the surrounding area
• Schools in the area:
  • Saratoga Springs City School District;
  • School Districts in Albany, Schoharie, Schenectady, and Southern Saratoga counties;
  • School Districts in Northern Saratoga, Washington, and Hamilton counties; and
  • Private Schools in the Capital District