Title

Edith Sancroft interview, 1994 November 22

Contributor Names

Poll, Carol (Interviewer)

Sancroft, Edith

Date

1994-11-21

Date Digitized

2020

Description

Edith Sancroft, professor of health and physical education at the time of this interview, and former Dean of Liberal Arts, joined FIT in 1964. She immediately began a large expansion of the school's dance program and talks about the introduction of an intermediate level of dance for her more advanced students. Sancroft sees choreography and dance as a natural partner to fashion design; her students benefit from the knowledge that body movement has to offer. She pays homage to the 1960s as a period of great growth for FIT. With the formation of the union and the presence of the Civil Rights Movement, the curriculum offerings at FIT grew in variety and scale. During this period, she was also able to offer master classes in dance with guests such as Syvilla Fort, Charles Wiedman, and Mary Anthony. Sancroft talks about how her department has changed and its eventual separation from the Math and Science Department. She also discusses the growth in diversity within the student body. Sancroft laments the loss of intimacy at FIT and remembers its former familial nature. That being said, she gives a lot of credit to faculty members such as Mildred [last name unknown] who wrote a series of grants to support the creation of the educational skills program, an invaluable part of FIT's curriculum.

Type

Moving Image

Oral histories

Subject

Sancroft, Edith

Feldman, Marvin

Jarvie, Lawrence

Goodman, Shirley, 1915-1991

Karp, Barry

Wiedman, Charles

Marcus, Gladys

Anthony, Mary

Fort, Syvilla

Dubinsky, David, 1892-1982

Fashion

Education

Health and Physical Education

Education, Humanistic

Dance

Civil rights movements

Fashion Institute of Technology (New York, N.Y.)

New York (State)--New York

Related Materials

Finding Aid

Rights

In Copyright

This video was produced by the Fashion Institute of Technology ("FIT") and is the property of FIT. FIT expressly prohibits the copying, displaying, or uploading to a website of any portion of this video, except for the purposes of fair use as defined in the copyright laws, without express written permission from FIT. This video has been made available online by the Fashion Institute of Technology Gladys Marcus Library strictly for research and educational purposes. If you are the copyright holder for content in this video and have any objections to this work being made available online, please notify us immediately at [email protected].

Identifier

FIT Repository ID: aod_000210

SPARC reference code: US.NNFIT.SC.FITA.3.20.4.9.4.25