President, Bryn Mawr College

http://www.brynmawr.edu/president/about/

Jane Dammen McAuliffe, an internationally known scholar of Islamic studies, became the eighth president of Bryn Mawr College in 2008.

Under McAuliffe’s leadership Bryn Mawr has continued its tradition as a premiere liberal arts college for women while broadening its academic and extracurricular offerings to meet the needs of today’s students.

A long-time advocate of increasing global connections in higher education, McAuliffe has pursued, and continues to explore, a number of mutually-advantageous relationships with academic institutions in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. At the same time, Bryn Mawr’s student body has become ever more internationally diverse – international students comprise a record 27 percent of the class of 2015.

On campus, McAuliffe led the successful “Smart Women, Strong Women” initiative to ensure students, faculty, and staff have a state-of-the-art athletic and fitness facility and playing field. She also oversaw the integration of student services for the college’s graduate and undergraduate offerings to maximize the college’s resources to the benefit of each group.

During her tenure, Bryn Mawr has re-energized its partnerships with Haverford and Swarthmore and set the groundwork for even greater collaboration in curricular coordination, student services, environmental sustainability, and more.

Through careful financial management and astute investment, Bryn Mawr became one of only four colleges and universities nationwide to receive a bond upgrade in 2010, a key indicator of the college’s economic strength.

McAuliffe sees Bryn Mawr using its prominence and prestige to shine a light on “the paramount moral challenge of this century” ─ the systemic oppression and brutalization of women across the globe. As part of that effort, the college brought together leading international educators, advocates, and NGO leaders for the “Heritage and Hope” conference in September of 2010 and is currently partnering with the State Department and the other Seven Sisters to launch the Women in Public Service Program.

President, Smith College

http://www.smith.edu/president/biography.php

In 2002, Carol Tecla Christ became the 10th president of Smith College.

Born in New York City in 1944, Christ attended public schools in northern New Jersey. In 1966 she graduated with high honors from Douglass College and went on to Yale University, where she received the Ph.D. in English.

In 1970 Christ joined the English faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. As chair of her department from 1985 to 1988, she built and maintained one of the top-ranked English departments in the country. She entered the university’s administration in 1988, serving first as dean of humanities and later as provost and dean of the College of Letters and Sciences. In 1994 Christ was appointed vice chancellor and provost (and later became executive vice chancellor). During her six years as Berkeley’s top academic officer, she was credited with sharpening the institution’s intellectual focus and building top-rated departments in the humanities and sciences. In addition, she helped shape Berkeley’s campus policy in response to Proposition 209, the 1996 California law barring the consideration of race in college admissions.

Christ, who was the highest-ranking female administrator at Berkeley until she returned to full-time teaching in 2000, has a well-established reputation as a champion of women’s issues and diversity. Her first administrative position was as assistant to the chancellor on issues involving the status of women. She describes her undergraduate education at Douglass, the women’s college of Rutgers University, as formative and has, in the words of a colleague, “an intellectual and emotional commitment to women’s education.”

At Smith, Christ’s administration has been characterized by an energetic program of outreach, innovation, and long-range planning, including capital planning, intended to position Smith for optimal success in a changing higher education landscape. She launched a review, conducted by members of the Smith faculty and outside scholars, to determine the distinctive intellectual traditions of the Smith curriculum and areas on which to build. Issued in 2007, The Smith Design for Learning: A Plan to Reimagine a Liberal Arts Education builds upon Smith’s history of pedagogical innovation, identifying priority areas – among them, global studies, environmental sustainability, and community engagement – for significant investment over the coming decade.

In the area of capital planning, a number of major building projects have come to fruition during Christ’s tenure: the renovation and expansion of the Brown Fine Arts Center; a dramatic new campus center; a renovated Lyman Conservatory; the impressive Olin Fitness Center; new homes for the Poetry Center and the Mwangi Cultural Center; the renovation of Lilly Hall, home of the college’s School for Social Work; and the construction of Conway House, an apartment building for Ada Comstock Scholars with children. Ford Hall, a state-of-the-art, sustainably designed classroom and laboratory facility named in recognition of its lead donor, the Ford Motor Company Fund, opened in 2009; it serves as home to the college’s pioneering Picker Engineering Program as well as the departments of molecular biology, chemistry, biochemistry and computer science. Under Christ’s leadership, Smith has made significant commitments to environmental sustainability in its curriculum and campus operations, including the construction of a co-generation facility for power and heat and the dedication of the MacLeish Field Station, a 200-acre woodland tract in Whately, Mass., for environmental education and research.

In various forums, including the American Chemical Society, the Chautauqua Institute, and the Council for the Advancement of Education, Christ has addressed such issues as women’s careers, civil discourse, and the expectations and demands of accountability in the academy. Her op-ed articles have appeared in The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. In 2004 Christ and Mount Holyoke College President Joanne Creighton co-hosted an international conference on issues and challenges in women’s education, which also examined women’s study of science. The resulting organization, Women’s Education Worldwide, comprises 60 colleges on five continents and is committed to developing collaborative strategies to increase access to high-quality education for girls and women. Under Christ’s leadership, Smith has made significant commitments to international and intercultural studies and to global outreach and recruitment. Fifteen percent of the class entering in fall 2011 are citizens of countries other than the United States.

While developing Smith’s ties across the country and around the world, Christ is equally committed to strengthening relations between the college and its local community. She is a member of the board of directors of the Western Massachusetts Economic Development Council, Clarke School for the Deaf, and Northampton’s renowned Academy of Music. In addition, she has established a community advisory board to address such issues as affordable housing and Smith’s support for Northampton’s public schools. She serves on the boards of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE) and the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), is a science education adviser to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and is a trustee of Sarah Lawrence College.

Throughout her administrative career, Christ has maintained an active program of teaching and research. She has published two books: The Finer Optic: The Aesthetic of Particularity in Victorian Poetry and Victorian and Modern Poetics. She also edited a Norton Critical Edition of George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss and co-edited the Norton Anthology of English Literature and Victorian Literature and The Victorian Visual Imagination. She is professor of English at Smith and has offered seminars on science and literature and on the arts. In 2004 she was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in recognition of her contributions as a leader in higher education. In 2007, Yale University Graduate School presented Christ with its highest honor, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal, in recognition of her distinguished achievements in scholarship, teaching, academic administration, and public service. In 2011 she was awarded an honorary doctoral degree by the American College of Greece for her service to education and public life.

Christ has an avid interest in music. She has studied the piano since childhood and learned to play the viola as an adult.

Her son Jonathan is a graduate of New York University and lives in New York. Her daughter Elizabeth is a Mount Holyoke College alumna and is pursuing graduate studies.

Christ resides on campus with her husband, Paul Alpers, a scholar of the literature of the English Renaissance. He holds the title of Class of 1942 Professor of English Emeritus at Berkeley and is professor in residence at Smith.

President, Franklin & Marshall College

http://www.fandm.edu/president/porterfield-biography

Daniel R. Porterfield, became Franklin & Marshall College’s 15th president on March 1, 2011. As president, Porterfield prioritizes enhancing academic excellence, supporting students, building campus community, and increasing civic outreach. A professor of English, he plans to teach literature courses dealing with human rights, education and social justice.

Prior to his appointment at Franklin & Marshall, Porterfield served as senior vice president for strategic development at his alma mater, Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. In this role he assisted the president of the university with the development of new projects and led Georgetown’s institutional positioning, communications, government relations, community relations and intercollegiate athletics. He spearheaded Georgetown’s relationship with Teach for America, KIPP, the D.C. public schools, and The Cristo Rey Network, on whose board he serves. He founded a number of longstanding Georgetown programs for immigrant children, D.C. students, and at-risk youth.

In 2003, Porterfield received Georgetown’s Dorothy Brown Award for exemplary commitment to the educational advancement of students. He subsequently received the Georgetown College Edward Bunn, S.J., Award for Faculty Excellence and the School of Foreign Service Faculty Excellence Award.

Prior to coming to Georgetown in 1997, Porterfield served for four years as a senior aide to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E. Shalala.

Porterfield was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities. He earned his Ph.D. at The City University of New York Graduate Center.

A native of Baltimore, he is married to Karen A. Herrling, an advocacy attorney in state and local enforcement of immigrant rights. They have three children.

President, ITHAKA

http://www.ithaka.org/about-ithaka/our-staff-1/kevin-guthrie-president

Kevin M. Guthrie is an executive and entrepreneur with expertise in high technology and not-for-profit management. He was the founding president of JSTOR (1995) and Ithaka (2004). JSTOR and Ithaka merged in January 2010 to form a new organization (ITHAKA) with a mission to help the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. ITHAKA provides three externally facing services: JSTOR, the research, teaching and learning platform; Portico, the digital preservation service; and Ithaka S+R, the strategy and research enterprise focused on helping the scholarly community make a successful and sustainable transition to digital and network technologies. ITHAKA has offices in New York, N.Y., Princeton, N.J., and Ann Arbor, Mich.

Previously Guthrie started his own software development company serving the needs of college and professional football teams, and later served as a research associate at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where he authored The New-York Historical Society: Lessons from One Nonprofit’s Long Struggle for Survival (Jossey Bass). His diverse background also includes experience as a professional football player, a sports broadcaster and producer, and a consultant for an Oscar-winning motion picture.

Kevin holds a B.S.E. in civil engineering from Princeton University and an M.B.A. from Columbia University. He lives in New York City with his wife, Sari Chang, and their three children.

President, Williams College

http://president.williams.edu/about-president-falk/

Since becoming the 17th president of Williams in April 2010, Adam Falk has focused on advancing the college’s mission of providing the finest possible liberal arts education by working with faculty to strengthen the curriculum, further enrich student residential life, and maximize the educational value derived from the growing diversity of the college’s students, faculty, and staff.

He has overseen a wide reorganization of the college administration and led the successful effort to raise the funds needed to resume the $82 million Sawyer Library Project, which will transform teaching and learning in the humanities and social sciences.

Falk joined the college from the Johns Hopkins University, where he served at the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences as the James B. Knapp Dean and earlier as Dean of the Faculty.

A high-energy physicist and award-winning teacher whose research focuses on elementary particle physics and quantum field theory, Falk is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a winner of prestigious awards from the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, the Research Corporation, and the Sloan Foundation.

Falk graduated with highest distinction as a Morehead-Cain Scholar from the University of North Carolina in 1987 and earned his Ph.D. in 1991 from Harvard University, where he received numerous awards for excellence in undergraduate teaching. He held postdoctoral appointments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and the University of California, San Diego, before joining the faculty at Johns Hopkins in 1994.

Falk and his wife Karen reside in the Williams President’s House with their three children: Briauna, David, and Alex.

Vice President for Finance and Treasurer, Swarthmore College

Suzanne P. Welsh has been vice president for finance and treasurer of Swarthmore College since 2002. She joined the College in1983; and in 1989, she was named treasurer. Prior to joining Swarthmore, she spent six years in corporate finance and accounting with a Fortune 500 company. She graduated from the University of Delaware in 1975 with a B.A. degree (mathematics) and a B.S. degree (accounting). She received an M.B.A. degree with a concentration in finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1976. She serves on the Pension Managers Advisory Committee to the New York Stock Exchange Board of Directors and on the Investment Committee of the William Penn Foundation. She is also a director of the Cutwater Select Income Fund, a closed-end bond fund.

President, Colorado College

http://www.coloradocollege.edu/offices/presidentsoffice/bio.dot

Jill Tiefenthaler became Colorado College’s 13th president on July 1, 2011. She was previously provost and professor of economics at Wake Forest University. She earned master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from Duke University, in 1989 and 1991 respectively, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Saint Mary’s College in South Bend, Ind., in 1987.

Prior to joining Wake Forest, Tiefenthaler taught economics at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y. She chaired the economics department from 2000 to 2003, and from 2003 to 2006 she served as associate dean of the faculty. At Colgate, Tiefenthaler took lead roles in strengthening strategic planning, faculty development, enrollment management, curriculum development, and interdisciplinary scholarship through the establishment of new centers and institutes.

With research interests focused on labor economics, economics of the family, and development economics, she has published numerous articles in scholarly journals. Several of those address topics related to the economics of domestic violence. Some of her cross-cultural academic work includes studies conducted in the Philippines and Brazil, including a study for the World Bank in the ’90s.

Tiefenthaler has been a leader in university/community engagement. As founding director of Colgate’s Upstate Institute, designed to bring together the resources of Colgate with the needs of the region, she expanded outreach by working closely with community and business leaders. She served on the Madison County Priorities Council, a community group that planned ways to improve the health and welfare of county residents. She also was on the board of the Partnership for Community Development, a joint venture between Colgate and the Hamilton community that focused on sustainable economic development.

As chief academic officer at Wake Forest, Tiefenthaler led a strategic planning process culminating in a 10-year plan to develop Wake Forest as the nation’s leading collegiate university. The plan reflects the emphasis on the teacher-scholar model, education of the whole person, and the preservation of opportunity in higher education. Under her leadership, Wake Forest established the Institute for Public Engagement, the Humanities Institute, and a number of interdisciplinary research centers. She presided over the integration of the university’s two business schools under the leadership of a new dean; a more than a 50 percent increase in applications; the nationally publicized decision to end the requirement of standardized test scores; and the capping of loans to Wake Forest’s neediest undergraduates. She worked with donors and other friends of Wake Forest routinely to increase support for all aspects of the university’s progressive academic program.

Tiefenthaler is married to Kevin Rask, a college research professor at Colorado College. They have two children, Olivia, 13, and Owen, 10.

President, Vassar College

http://president.vassar.edu/biography/index.html

Catharine Bond Hill became the 10th president of Vassar College in July 2006. Hill is a noted economist whose work focuses on higher education affordability and access, as well as on economic development and reform in Africa. For the previous seven years Hill was the provost of Williams College.

Under Hill’s leadership, Vassar has reinstated need-blind admissions and replaced loans with grants in financial aid for low-income families. Other initiatives include greater community outreach and the development of tools and resources for institutional research and long-term planning. Hill also teaches an advanced-level seminar at Vassar on the economics of higher education.

Hill continues to study the access by low-income students to highly selective colleges and the net prices paid by these colleges’ students relative to their family incomes. This includes “Low-income students and highly selective private colleges: Geography, searching, and recruiting” (Economics of Education Review, 2010), her most recent publication with longtime co-author Gordon C. Winston. Hill has also authored opinion pieces for the Los Angeles Times, BusinessWeek, The Christian Science Monitor, and Inside Higher Ed, and been quoted by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News Service, Money magazine, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among other outlets.

Hill has been selected for a number of scholarly awards, grants, and fellowships from organizations including the American Council of Learned Societies, Brookings Institution, National Science Foundation, and Social Science Research Council. Several years of research by Hill and her colleagues on the economics and affordability of higher education were primarily supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She is a member of the NCAA Division III Presidents Council and a trustee of The College Board.

Hill originally joined the economics faculty at Williams in 1985. In her earlier career she worked for the World Bank and the Fiscal Analysis Division of the U.S. Congressional Budget Office.

In what she has called one of the most transformative experiences of her life, Hill and her family lived from 1994 to 1997 in the Republic of Zambia, where she was the fiscal/trade adviser and then chief-of-party for the Harvard Institute for International Development’s Project on Macroeconomic Reform. She has written widely from her experiences in Africa, including co-editing the books Promoting and Sustaining Economic Reform in Zambia (2004) and the widely-reviewed Public Expenditure in Africa (1996).

Hill graduated summa cum laude from Williams College and earned B.A. and M.A. degrees at Brasenose College, Oxford University, with first class honours in politics, philosophy, and economics. She completed her Ph.D. in economics at Yale University.

Hill and her husband, Kent J. Kildahl, head of the Upper School at Riverdale Country School (Riverdale, New York), have three children.

Program Officer, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

http://www.mellon.org/about_foundation/staff/program-area-staff/eugene-m-tobin

Eugene M. Tobin is the program officer for Higher Education and the Liberal Arts Colleges Program at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. His grant-making responsibilities encompass the areas of faculty and curricular development, presidential leadership, undergraduate teaching and learning, educational effectiveness, and institutional collaboration. Through the work of the College Sports Project, he coordinated the Foundation’s support of colleges and universities (within the NCAA’s Division III) who are committed to aligning intercollegiate athletic programs more closely with educational values.

Tobin spent 23 years at Hamilton College as a faculty member, department chair, dean of faculty, and as the 18th president (1993-2003). Prior to joining the Hamilton faculty in 1980, he taught at state colleges in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, was a National Endowment for the Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow at Vanderbilt University, and held visiting appointments at Miami University (Ohio) and Indiana University, Bloomington. His research focuses on late 19th-century and early 20th-century American social and political history and the history of American higher education.

Tobin earned his B.A. in history from Rutgers University and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in the history of American civilization from Brandeis University. He is the co-author with William G. Bowen and Martin A. Kurzweil of Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education, winner of the 2006 American Educational Research Association’s Outstanding Book Award. His recent publications include an essay, “The Modern Evolution of America’s Flagship Universities,” in William G. Bowen, Matthew M. Chingos, and Michael S. McPherson, Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities (Princeton University Press, 2009).

President, Lafayette College

http://president.lafayette.edu/biography/

Daniel H. Weiss became the 16th president of Lafayette College July 1, 2005. Lafayette, which is located in Easton, Pennsylvania, is a highly selective independent, coeducational institution enrolling 2,400 undergraduates. The College offers programs of instruction leading to the Bachelor of Arts degree in 32 fields of study, including engineering, and the Bachelor of Science degree in nine areas of science and four fields of engineering.

In the fall of 2007, the trustees and faculty of the College unanimously approved a new strategic plan for Lafayette following a yearlong process led by President Weiss. The Plan for Lafayette calls for ambitious investment in the academic core of the institution, including a 20% increase in the size of the permanent faculty, an enhanced commitment to student access and community diversity, the development of new programs and facilities in the life sciences and the arts, and a renewed commitment to a strong and vital partnership with the City of Easton. The plan is in the first phases of implementation.

Weiss came to Lafayette from The Johns Hopkins University, where he was the James B. Knapp Dean of the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. His duties as dean included oversight of all departments and faculty, graduate and undergraduate academic programs, scholarly and scientific research, budget and financial operations, strategic planning, development and alumni affairs, housing and student life, admissions, and enrollment services. Before being named to that position in 2002, he was the dean of the faculty at the Krieger School, with responsibility for academic and budgetary oversight of 300 faculty within 30 departments and major centers.

A leading authority on the art of medieval Europe in the Age of the Crusades, Weiss was a professor of art history in the Krieger School and chaired the art history department from 1998 to 2001. He earned an M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1992) in art history at Johns Hopkins and joined the faculty there in 1993. He also holds an M.B.A. (1985) from Yale School of Management and was a consultant with Booz, Allen & Hamilton, Inc. from 1985 to 1989. He received his B.A. from The George Washington University in 1979, with a double major in art history and psychology.

Weiss has written or edited four books and numerous articles on the art of the Middle Ages, with a special focus on Romanesque, Gothic, and Crusader art and the interaction of Byzantine culture with the Medieval West. He has also published widely in other fields, including American higher education and the Second World War, and has lectured at many colleges, universities, and museums in the United States and abroad. His research has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Harvard University, Yale University, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto medioevo.

In 1994 he won the Van Courtlandt Elliott Prize, which is awarded annually by the Medieval Academy of America for a first article in the field of medieval studies judged to be of outstanding quality. He was one of the first art historians to receive that award. He received three awards for teaching excellence as a member of the Johns Hopkins faculty and was the recipient of the Aaron O. Hoff People’s Choice Award at Lafayette in 2006. In 2006 he received the Community Partner Award from the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce and in 2007 the Community Service Award from the Two Rivers Area Chamber of Commerce.

Weiss is on the International Advisory Board of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, a trustee of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Pennsylvania. He is married to Sandra Jarva Weiss, a graduate of The George Washington University and its law school. A specialist in health-care law, she is a partner in the firm of Tallman, Hudders & Sorrentino. The Weisses have two young sons, Teddy and Joel.