January 23, 2001
Sp51
Contact: Sarah Maxwell
Director of Media Relations
507.646.4183
[For the media: Download
a photograph of Elizabeth McKinsey in zipped format. Photo credit:
Tom Roster]
Carleton College Dean Announces Plans to Step Down
Elizabeth McKinsey Will Resign in 2002
Northfield, Minn. — Carleton College
Dean Elizabeth McKinsey has announced that she will step down
in June 2002, at the same time that Carleton President Stephen
R. Lewis, Jr. retires. McKinsey made the announcement yesterday
at a faculty meeting and in a campus-wide e-mail message. In
the announcement, she praised the Carleton faculty for their
extraordinary commitment, their creativity, their support, their
constructive criticism, and their collaboration.
McKinsey has served as Dean of the College
at Carleton since 1989. She also holds the title of Professor
of English. She is responsible for overseeing the academic division
of the College, including faculty appointments and review processes.
President Lewis called her leadership "of central importance
not only to Carleton’s success in the past dozen years but
also to its long term future health."
During her tenure at Carleton, McKinsey established
the Perlman Center for Learning and Teaching, a model center
for studying and improving the learning and teaching process
from both the student and faculty perspective; created a faculty
personnel committee and improved personnel procedures; strengthened
Carleton’s interdisciplinary programs and created new programs
in cross cultural studies and environmental and technology studies;
and developed the Mellon Faculty Life Cycles project, which supports
faculty at various stages of their teaching careers.
"In Beth, the Carleton faculty has found
an intelligent, generous, good-humored, resilient, and fair-minded
female dean who has knocked down our assumptions about what deans
are like and do: a grumpy old man who arrives saying no, spends
the day slashing budgets, and leaves saying no and still grumpy,"
said John Ramsay, the Hollis L. Caswell Professor of Educational
Studies and president of the Carleton faculty. "She has
a very high regard for the faculty and its culture here, and
has deep respect for what we do. She understands that the faculty’s
voice is very important."
A tenured member of the faculty will be appointed
by President Lewis to serve as interim dean for a period of one
to three years beginning in the academic year 2002-03, assuring
Carleton’s new president ample time for appointing a new
dean. Carleton officials expect to have a new president in place
by July 2002.
Prior to her work at Carleton, McKinsey was
director of the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute at Radcliffe
College and taught English at Harvard University and Bryn Mawr
College. Throughout her career, she has been an articulate advocate
for liberal arts education, giving speeches around the country
and publishing articles on the topic.
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