The Small Room by May Sarton

This is a perceptive, deeply questioning novel of a New England college, its students and it's faculty. It is a novel about women and the unique relationship between teacher and student - a relationship in which we all are involved.
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Anxiously embarking on her first teaching job, Lucy Winter arrives at a New England women's college and shortly finds herself in the thick of a crisis: she has discovered a dishonest act committed by a brilliant student who is the protegee of a powerful faculty member. How the central characters --- students and teachers --- react to the crisis and what effect the scandal has on their personal and professional lives are the central motifs of May Sarton's sensitive, probing novel.