Joanne V. Creighton Named New President of Mount Holyoke College

The board voted on Thursday, February 16, after an exhaustive search process carried out by a committee comprised of trustees, faculty, staff, and students. Barbara M. Rossotti, chair of the Board of Trustees, described Dr. Creighton's appointment as "a felicitous alignment of the goals and aspirations of the Mount Holyoke community for meeting the educational needs of young women with Dr. Creighton's proven abilities as a scholar, teacher, and leader of institutions."

Dr. Creighton's career in higher education has spanned some thirty years. She entered academia in 1965 as a teaching fellow at the University of Michigan. She progressed through a series of teaching and administrative positions at Wayne State University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro before being appointed vice president for academic affairs and provost, and professor of English, at Wesleyan University in 1990. She was appointed interim president in August 1994, the first woman to be named vice president, and, later, president, at Wesleyan.

Mount Holyoke College, America's first institution of higher learning for women, continues to carry out the revolutionary mandate of its founder, educator Mary Lyon, who, in establishing the school in 1837, challenged students to "Go where no one else goes, do what no one else will do."

The College offers its more than 1,900 students a contemporary interpretation and application of the classic liberal arts education, exploring the breadth and depth of arts and sciences through forty-four majors including a variety of interdisciplinary programs. Its graduates have increasingly attained leadership positions in many professions, most impressively in the fields of science and mathematics.

As Mount Holyoke continues to fulfill its original mission of opening doors to academic excellence to all qualified women through its need blind admission policy, students from all parts of the United States, representing many socioeconomic backgrounds, meet and study with peers from sixty countries around the world.

It is in this stimulating educational environment that Dr. Creighton will assume the presidency when she succeeds Elizabeth T. Kennan on January 1, 1996. Dean of Faculty and Provost Peter Berek will serve as interim president from July through December.

"Perhaps the most exciting aspect of my new appointment," Dr. Creighton said, "is the wonderful human capital that exists at Mount Holyoke. I'm already impressed with how the intellectual energy here is fused with the practical challenges of this age. I intend to stretch and grow as Mount Holyoke stretches and grows."

Dr. Creighton's career has been punctuated by achievements in academics and advocacy for women. At Wesleyan she led in the development and implementation of the current University Five Year Plan, established the "Freeman Asian Scholars Program," and helped bring to an all-time high the number of minority and women scholars on the faculty.

Her four books and her many articles, speeches, and professional presentations have spanned and linked her commitments to advances in higher education and opportunity for women. Dr. Creighton has concentrated much of her scholarly work and teaching on authors Margaret Drabble and Joyce Carol Oates. Her most recent book, Joyce Carol Oates: Novels of the Middle Years, was published in 1992 (Macmillan). Her other books include William Faulkner's Craft of Revision (1977); Joyce Carol Oates (1979); and Margaret Drabble (1985).

"I was fortunate," she has said, "to be part of the generation that from the sixties through the nineties has raised the world's consciousness about the justice and universal advantage of opening up leadership to women. Now, I'm even more fortunate to participate in--and, I hope, to help lead--progress in the application of new theory and scholarship on women's education."

Born in Marinette, Wisconsin, Dr. Creighton is the daughter of the late William J. Vanish, a career forest ranger, and Bernice Vanish, of Crivitz, Wisconsin. Growing up in northern Wisconsin, she lived in Pound and graduated as valedictorian of the class of 1960 at Coleman High School in Coleman, Wisconsin. She attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison on scholarship, majored in English, and graduated in 1964 with honors and won election to Phi Beta Kappa.

She received a master of arts in teaching from Harvard University in 1965 and earned a doctorate in English Literature in 1969 from the University of Michigan. She spent 1968 in London, England, conducting research and writing for her dissertation, "Dubliners and Go Down, Moses: The Short Story Composite."

Dr. Creighton began her career as a teacher and literary scholar when she joined the faculty of Wayne State University in 1968. She rose from instructor to full professor of English, leaving in 1985 to accept appointment at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. At Wayne State, she was also associate dean of liberal arts and special assistant to the provost for the humanities.

Dr. Creighton is married to Thomas F. Creighton, who holds a law degree from the London School of Economics. Their son, William, attends Duke University.