Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, has named Miriam E. Nelson as the seventh president of the liberal arts college. She will take office on July 1.
The college enrolls about 1,300 undergraduate students, according to the latest data supplied to the U.S. Department of Education. Women make up 62 percent of the student body.
In accepting the appointment, Dr. Nelson said that “Hampshire is a national leader in progressive education on issues at the heart of my own passions. Now more than ever, higher education has a responsibility to empower graduates who are dedicated to taking action, who engage life and work with imagination and creativity, and who are versed in the knowledge, empathy, experience, skills, and values needed to address our most pressing challenges.”
Dr. Nelson is currently the director of the Sustainability Institute and deputy chief Sustainability Officer at the University of New Hampshire. Before going to the University of New Hampshire, she served on the faculty at Tufts University in Massachusetts for 25 years. When she left Tufts, Dr. Nelson was a professor of nutrition and the associate dean of university’s Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service.
Dr. Nelson is the author of the best-selling, 10-book series Strong Women. Collectively the series has sold more than 1 million copies and has been reprinted in 14 languages.
A graduate of the University of Vermont, Dr. Nelson earned a master’s degree in education at Harvard University and a Ph.D. in nutritional biochemistry from Tufts University.