A Change in Leadership at Bennington College in Vermont

Mariko Silver, president of Bennington College in Vermont, will step down from her post on July 1 to become president of the Henry Luce Foundation in New York City. Henry Luce was the founder of Time magazine. Since the foundation was established in 1936, more than 5,800 grants totaling more than $1 billion have been made, many to educational institutions.

Bennington College is a liberal arts educational institution that enrolls about 775 undergraduate students and 75 graduate students, according to the latest data supplied to the U.S. Department of Education. Women make up 65 percent of the undergraduate student body.

Dr. Silver became president of Bennington College in 2013. Dr. She previously served as a senior advisor to the president of Arizona State University. During the Obama administration, Dr. Silver was acting assistant secretary for international affairs and deputy assistant secretary for international policy in the Department of Homeland Security.

President Silver is a graduate of Yale University, where she majored in history. She holds a master’s degree in science and technology policy from the University of Sussex in England, and a Ph.D. in economic geography from the University of California, Los Angeles.

The board of trustees at Bennington College has named Isabel Roche as interim president, while a nationwide search gets underway to find a permanent president. She is provost and dean of the college. Dr. Roche joined the faculty at Bennington College in 2002. She was appointed dean in 2011 and provost in 2015. Dr. Roche is a scholar of French literature. She is the author of Character and Meaning in the Novels of Victor Hugo (Purdue University, Press, 2006.)

Dr. Roche is a graduate of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from New York University.