The First Woman President of Gustavus Adolphus College

The board of trustees of Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, has named Rebecca M. Bergman as the seventeenth president of the educational institution. When she takes office on July 1, she will become the first woman president in the 152-year history of the liberals arts college. The college located southwest of Minneapolis, enrolls about 2,500 students. Women make up 56 percent of the student body.

Bergman has served on the board of trustees of the college since 2007. For the past quarter century, she has been an executive for Medtronic Inc., a medical technology company headquartered in Minneapolis. She currently serves as vice president for research, technology, and therapy delivery systems in the company’s cardiac rhythm disease management division.

Bergman is a graduate of Princeton University, where she majored in chemical engineering. She has taken coursework in the Ph.D. program in chemical engineering and materials science at the University of Minnesota. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.