Mary Maples Dunn, the former president of Smith College, the highly rated liberal arts educational institution for women in Northampton, Massachusetts, died on March 19 while visiting family in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was 85 years old.
Dr. Dunn was a native of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. She was a graduate of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where she majored in history. She held a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in colonial U.S. history from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.
Dr. Dunn taught at Bryn Mawr College while still in graduate school and moved up the ranks to full professor. She also served as dean of the college. In 1985, she was named the eighth president of Smith College and served in that role until 1995.
After stepping down as president of Smith College, Dr. Dunn served as director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Radcliffe College and later became the inaugural dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She later served as co-executive director of the American Philosophical Society with her husband Richard S. Dunn, who taught history at the University of Pennsylvania. The couple co-edited The Papers of William Penn, Volumes 1-3 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981, 1982, 1986).