Elizabeth Kiss has been named the twentieth president of Union College in Schenectady, New York. According to the most recent federal data, the college enrolls nearly 2,100 students, 45 percent of whom are women. Dr. Kiss is set to take the helm of the liberal arts institution on July 1.
Dr. Kiss currently serves as the first-ever woman chief executive officer of the Rhodes Trust in Oxford, England, a global higher education charity and administrator of the Rhodes Scholarship program. Dr. Kiss was a recipient of the prestigious scholarship during her graduate studies. Over the past six and a half years, she has helped the organization achieve record-breaking funding, expand other fellowship programs, and help talented young scholars from countries around the world.
Prior to her current role, Dr. Kiss spent 12 years as president of Agnes Scott College, a women’s liberal arts school in Decatur, Georgia. Earlier, she served as founding director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Her career in academia began as a faculty member at Princeton University, where she taught for nearly two decades.
“What drew me to Union, from the first moment, was the infectious excitement trustees, faculty, staff, and students have about their college,” said Dr. Kiss. “The people here are really jazzed about the secret sauce that is Union. And at the same time, they are clear-eyed about the challenges facing small liberal arts colleges today. The combination of acknowledging that we’re going to have to keep working hard, as everyone has been doing under [current Union College President David Harris’] outstanding leadership, and that we have something precious and unique to offer, is exciting.”
Dr. Kiss is a graduate of Davidson College in North Carolina, where she majored in philosophy. She was the college’s first student to be named a Rhodes Scholar. Her scholarship brought her to the University of Oxford, where she earned her master’s degree and Ph.D. in philosophy.