In 2013, Alison Byerly was named the first woman president of Lafayette College, the highly rated liberal arts educational institution in Easton, Pennsylvania. The board of trustees of Lafayette College has now extended Dr. Byerly’s contract for an additional five years.
Ed Ahart, chair of the college’s board of trustees said that “Alison has set Lafayette College on a trajectory to be recognized as one of the leaders in higher education. She has proven herself adept at developing and articulating strategies for strengthening the College and enhancing its academic reputation. From record-high student applications to the hiring of outstanding faculty, she is giving life to the board’s aspirations for Lafayette to take its rightful place as a leader in American higher education.”
Before becoming the 17th president of Lafayette College in October 2013, Dr. Byerly served as provost and executive vice president at Middlebury College in Vermont. She had served in that role from 2007 to 2013 and had been a member of the Middlebury faculty since 1989. Dr. Byerly is the author of Are We There Yet? Virtual Travel and Victorian Realism (University of Michigan Press, 2012) and Realism, Representation, and the Arts in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Dr. Byerly is a native of Glenside, Pennsylvania. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College, where she majored in English. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania.