Sonya Stephens Appointed the Nineteenth President of Mount Holyoke College

In 2016, the board of trustees of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, appointed Sonya Stephens to the post of acting president when then president Lynn Pasquerella announced that she was stepping down to become president of the Association of American Colleges & Universities. Dr. Stephens’ tenure as acting president was scheduled to last for three years.

But now the board of trustees has appointed Dr. Stephens as the permanent president of the highly rated liberal arts college for women, effective July 1. She will be the nineteenth president of Mount Holyoke.

Before being named acting president in 2016, Dr. Stephens served as vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at Mount Holyoke. Before coming to Mount Holyoke in 2013, Dr. Stephens was first vice provost for undergraduate education at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Dr. Stephens is a native of England. She earned a bachelor’s degree in modern and medieval languages and a Ph.D. in French at the University of Cambridge. Dr. Stephens also holds a master’s degree from the University of Montreal in Quebec, Canada.