Penny Gill Named Dean of the College
Penny Gill, Mary Lyon Professor of Humanities and professor of politics, has been appointed dean of Mount Holyoke, a three-year position starting in the fall. Gill replaces Lee Bowie, professor of philosophy, who will take a yearlong sabbatical leave before returning to his department.
Lenore Carlisle, assistant professor of psychology and education and chair of the search committee, cited Gill’s broad understanding of Mount Holyoke and its students as a factor in her selection. “She has a good sense of the challenges students face in finding a balance between the curricular and cocurricular,” Carlisle said. “She was very well versed on every perplexing or challenging issue we raised, from diversity to grade inflation. She was very compelling.”
Gill said her “number-one dream” is for Mount Holyoke to become “more self-aware and articulate” about itself. “We have a truly extraordinary opportunity now to consciously create something new, paradoxically something we also already are: a global women’s college,” said Gill.
“I think the dean could help us all to think more deeply about what our students need to learn, and how they can best learn it, so they can take their rightful places at the tables where solutions to the world’s most pressing problems will be found.”
