Sandra Doran Elevated to the Presidency of Salem College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina

The Salem Academy and College board of trustees has named Sandra J. Doran as Salem’s 21st president. Dr. Doran has spent the past 14 months as interim president and has agreed to serve a two-year term as the college’s permanent president.

Salem College, the liberal arts educational institution for women in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, enrolls just over 700 undergraduate students according to the latest data supplied to the U.S. Department of Education.

Before coming to Salem College in 2018, Doran served as national program director of the New England Board of Higher Education and as entrepreneur-in-residence at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. Earlier, she was chief of staff, vice president, and general counsel at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

McDara P. Folan III, chair of the Salem College board of trustees, said that “Doran assumed the interim presidency of Salem Academy and College with the specific charge from the board of trustees to stabilize and then reinvent our institution. Sandy has worked tirelessly with the board, our faculty, our students, and the Winston-Salem business and civic communities to return Salem to its rightful place of prominence in education.”

“I am truly humbled by the extraordinary support I have received from our richly diverse Salem community, our faculty, staff, students, alums, and the greater Winston-Salem community,” Doran said. “We have successfully worked together to position Salem for a bright future.

“Salem Academy and College is a truly remarkable place, with a mission of empowering women to succeed, to articulate their dreams and pursue them vigorously, and to be change agents in their work, families, and communities,” President Doran added. “Our graduates are critical to the fabric of our local, regional, and national communities and economies.”

President Doran is a graduate of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where she majored in political science. She holds a juris doctorate from the Syracuse University College of Law in New York.