Mount Holyoke alumna Lynn Pasquerella ’80 has been named the 18th president of Mount Holyoke. The Board of Trustees met on Oct. 31 and unanimously elected Pasquerella Mount Holyoke’s next president, after the Presidential Search Committee recommended her.

At 10 a.m. on Monday morning, Leslie Anne Miller ’73, chair of the Board of Trustees, sent an email to members of the Mount Holyoke community announcing the Board’s decision. The president-elect was introduced to the community on Monday at 4:15 p.m. at a ceremony in Chapin auditorium.

“Today we celebrate…the homecoming of one of our own,” said Miller. “Somewhere Mary Lyon is nodding in approval right now.”
The Presidential Search Committee, President Joanne Creighton and Pasquerella were seated on stage as Miller, Creighton, Jeanne Amster ’77, chair of the Presidential Search Committee, and Pasquerella made remarks. Members of the Mount Holyoke community watched the Web cast online from far-flung locations ranging from Montpellier, France to London, England to Seattle, Washington.

Creighton warmly introduced Pasquerella saying, “All of us here couldn’t be more proud of you.” After Amster declared Pasquerella a “daughter of Mount Holyoke,” Miller took the podium and pronounced her “a woman of unassailable integrity.”

Born in Connecticut, Pasquerella was raised by her mother, who worked at a light-switch factory. Her father was illiterate. The first in her family to graduate college, she enrolled at Quinebaug Valley Community College and transferred to Mount Holyoke as a junior. She worked 35 hours per week to put herself through college while maintaining a 4.0 cumulative Grade Point Average.

“I’ve always been passionate about what it is I’m doing. I felt so privileged to have the opportunity to come to Mount Holyoke…I was never bothered by doing the work to attain these educational objectives,” said Pasquerella, in an interview on Monday.

A philosophy major at Mount Holyoke, Pasquerella graduated magna cum laude and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and went on to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy at Brown University. According to Pasquerella, she was one of three women in her Ph.D. program, and the only woman to finish the Ph.D.

“My male colleagues said things like, ‘he picked you because you’re a woman.’ I had people ask me, ‘why would a woman ever study philosophy?’…It was the confidence instilled in me here that helped me navigate that world very easily,” said Pasquerella.

After 19 years as a philosophy professor at the University of Rhode Island (URI), Pasquerella was named URI’s associate dean of the graduate school. In 2006, she became vice provost for research and dean of URI’s graduate school. In 2008, she was named provost and chief academic officer at the University of Hartford, a position she currently holds.

While at URI, Pasquerella began work with the Africa Center for Engineering Social Solutions (ACESS), an African organization aimed at helping to create and implement simple solutions for delivering clean water to the West Lake District of Victoria, Kenya.
“We have found that the humanistic and social scientific perspective is just as important as the scientific one,” said Pasquerella. “We need to use our expertise and our intelligence in order to achieve goals of social justice.”

Pasquerella’s term will begin next July 1, 30 years after her own graduation, when President Joanne Creighton steps down after leading the College since 1996.

The campus reaction to her future presidency was positive. Dean of College Penny Gill said, “Our new president brings deep intellectual accomplishment, an intuitive understanding of and commitment to the core mission of the college, and such a delight in students!”
“I will be honored to work with her when she arrives as our 18th president,” she added.

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Magdalena Georgieva ’10 and Marianna Nash ’11 contributed reporting to this article.

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