MaryLou Butler, the former president of Southwestern College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has died. She was 75 years old and had suffered from pancreatic cancer.
A native of Philadephia, Dr. Butler earned her undergraduate degree at Temple University in Philadelphia. During her undergraduate years, she traveled to Mississippi to take part in the Freedom Summer voter registration effort. She went on to obtain a master’s degree in counseling and educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She then took a counseling job at Seton Hall University in New Jersey before receiving a Ph.D. in counseling psychology at Arizona State University.
Dr. Butler then served on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania for seven years. There she was one of the founding members of the Feminist Therapy Collective. In 1980, Dr. Butler took a faculty position at the College of Santa Fe. In 1987, she joined the faculty at Southwestern College. She was named president of the college in 1996 and served in that role until her retirement in 2005.