Eastern Washington University Selects Shari McMahan as Its Next President

Shari McMahan has been chosen to be the twenty-seventh president of Eastern Washington University in Cheney. She is expected to take office this summer.

Eastern Washington University enrolls more than 10,000 undergraduates and more than 2,000 graduate students, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Education. Women make up 57 percent of the undergraduate student body.

Dr. McMahan is currently the provost and vice president for academic affairs at California State University, San Bernardino. She is the first woman provost in that university’s history. Dr. McMahan also has an academic appointment as a full professor in the College of Natural Sciences, Department of Health Science and Human Ecology at the university.

Before being named provost at the San Bernardino campus, Dr. McMahan served as deputy provost at California State University, Fullerton, where she had been on the health sciences faculty since 2000.

A first-generation college student, Dr. McMahan has a bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. in social ecology from the University of California, Irvine. She also earned a master’s degree in health science from California State University, Northridge.