The board of trustees of Scripps College in Claremont, California, has unanimously selected Suzanne Keen as its tenth president. When she takes office on July 1, 2022, she will also hold the W.M. Keck Foundation Presidential Chair.
Scripps College is a highly selective liberal arts educational institution for women that is one of the Claremont Colleges. It enrolls slightly more than 900 women in undergraduate programs and about 20 graduate students, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Education.
Dr. Keen is a distinguished scholar and professor of English literature. Since 2018, she has served as vice president of academic affairs and dean of faculty at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. She is the former dean of the college at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, where she served as chair of the English department.
Dr. Keen’s scholarship focuses on narrative empathy and feminist rhetorical narrative theory. She is the author of several books including Empathy and the Novel (Oxford University Press, 2007)
A native of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Dr. Keen received a bachelor’s degree in English literature and studio art and a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in English language and literature from Harvard University.