Kathleen McCartney, dean of the Graduate School of Education and the Gerald S. Lesser Professor in Early Childhood Development at Harvard University, was named the 11th president of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She succeeds Carol T. Christ, who has served as Smith president since 2002. McCartney will become president of Smith on July 1.
Dr. McCartney is a graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. at Yale. She began her academic career as an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard. She then held a tenured faculty position at the University of New Hampshire, where she was also the director of the university’s child study and development center. She returned to Harvard in 2000 and was named dean of the Graduate School of Education in 2001.