Vassar College elects Elizabeth Bradley as president

Elizabeth Howe Bradley has been elected the 11th president of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie.

Bradley has worked at Yale University for more than 20 years and has served as head of Branford College, one of the university”™s largest residential colleges for undergraduates. She has also served as the director of Yale”™s Brady-Johnson Program in grand strategy and as founder and faculty director of the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute.

“Elizabeth Bradley has shown extraordinary leadership in all aspects of her remarkably broad career, combining intellectual commitment and rigor with vision, energy, and administrative talent,” said William Plapinger, chairman of the Poughkeepsie college’s board of trustees. “Across the varied areas of her career, she has been committed to bringing together people from diverse backgrounds to develop creative solutions to change people”™s lives for the better. There could be nothing more resonant with our mission at Vassar College.”

Bradley was elected unanimously by the college’s board of trustees on Jan. 10. She will succeed Catharine Hill, who stepped down in August 2016 after 10 years as president. Since that time, dean of the faculty Jonathan Chenette has served as interim president. Bradley”™s term will begin July 1.

“This is a critical time for leadership in liberal arts education, with many complex issues facing our campuses, our nation, and our world,” Bradley said. “With its strong intellectual foundation and its legacy of making a difference through action, Vassar serves as a model of high-quality, accessible, and innovative higher education.”

Prior to her work at Yale, Bradley was a hospital administrator at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She graduated with a bachelor”™s degree from Harvard University in 1984, earned a master”™s in business administration from the University of Chicago in 1986 and a Ph.D. in health policy and health economics from Yale University in 1996.

“Working with students here in the U.S. and globally, I have seen how access to higher education changes lives, and it makes me even more committed to making certain we maintain Vassar as a diverse and inclusive community,” Bradley said.

The coeducational, independent liberal arts college was founded in 1861.