The board of trustees of Palo Alto University in California has announced that Maureen O’Connor will become president of the educational institution on August 1. The university was founded in 1975 as the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology. The university now enrolls about 200 undergraduate students and 900 graduate students. Women make up 70 percent of the undergraduate student body.
For the past 18 years, Dr. O’Connor has been a member of the faculty at the City University of New York. She was chair of the department of psychology at John Jay College from 2002 to 2008. Since 2008, Dr. O’Connor has been the director of the doctoral program in psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Dr. O’Connor is a graduate of Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. She holds a master’s degree, a law degree, and a Ph.D. in psychology, law, and policy from the University of Arizona.