{Please note--further information concerning the announcement is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.mtholyoke.edu:2780/csj/top.html
And, a video clip of an interview with Dr. Creighton taken today will be available by satellite feed between 3:30-4:15 pm (EST). Additional transmission details at end of release.}

Mount Holyoke College appoints Joanne Creighton President

Mount Holyoke Board of Trustees chair, Mrs. Barbara M. Rossotti, described Dr. Creighton's appointment as "a felicitous matching of the Mount Holyoke community's aspirations for meeting the educational needs of young women with Dr. Creighton's experiences as a scholar, teacher, and leader of institutions."

"As a distinguished scholar and teacher herself, Joanne Creighton is eminently qualified to continue Mount Holyoke's commitment to teaching and scholarship in the education of women and to become a spokesperson and advocate for the College. As an administrator and working always with the community in a consultative and collaborative way, she has demonstrated a deep capacity for defining and understanding the issues facing her institutions and developing and implementing plans to move them forward," Rossotti said.

Dr. Creighton's career in higher education has spanned some thirty years. She entered academia as a teaching fellow at the University of Michigan in 1965. She later 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, as well as professor of English, at Wesleyan University in 1990. The first woman vice president at Wesleyan, she was appointed Interim President there in August, 1994, the first woman to be named a president at Wesleyan.

Mount Holyoke College, America's first institution of higher learning for women, is re-energizing the 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 1900 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 and 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.

Mount Holyoke's Human Capital

"I'm impressed with the wonderful human capital that exists at Mount Holyoke College," said Dr. Creighton. "I am both stimulated and energized by the opportunity to be affiliated with the oldest women's college in the country. This is a heritage to be celebrated, enhanced and advanced in sophisticated ways into the next century. I am eager to join the community in thinking through and living through significant transformations in our culture. I expect to stretch and grow as Mount Holyoke stretches and grows."

Dr. Creighton's career has been punctuated by achievements in academic fields 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. Ms. Creighton has concentrated much of her scholarly work and teaching on the authors Margaret Drabble and Joyce Carol Oates. Her most recent book, Joyce Carol Oates: Novels of the Middle Years, was published in 1992 (Macmillan).

"My development as a woman and scholar has paralleled the development of the women's movement that grew out of the '60s and has now reached a full flowering, a kind of renaissance," Creighton said. "I feel fortunate to be coming to Mount Holyoke at this formative time in the history of American women. Enriched by a substantial body of new theory and scholarship, women's education and development can advance to a whole new level."

Dr. Creighton's appointment comes as the result of an exhaustive, eight-month-long search process involving a committee comprised of Trustees, faculty, students and staff.

Creighton received a BA in English from the University of Wisconsin, 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." It was in London that Dr. Creighton met her husband, Thomas F. Creighton, who holds a law degree from the London School of Economics. Their son, William, attends Duke University.

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A video clip will be available by satellite transmission between 3:30-4:15 pm (EST); coordinates are: Galaxy K7 Trans 7 Audio 6.2/6.8 Mono, Slate will read: Mount Holyoke College Major Announcement, February 16, 1995, South Hadley, MA. Feed will contain: 30 NAT SOT Video Mt Holyoke Campus and Soundbites with Joanne Creighton. Tape will repeat 6-8 times within the satellite window. At beginning of feed, text of name and background will be provided.