- Mattson has 14 different areas and offices reporting to her, in addition to all the college’s academic departments and programs. “President Byerly recognized that so many areas reported to the dean of the college that the position had really outgrown the role,” she says. “The title ‘provost’ is more about elevating the position’s profile on campus without changing what the office has been doing.”
- Mattson, born in South Korea, spent the first five years of her life there. (“My father was a medical missionary,” she explains.)
- A graduate from Willmar [Minnesota] High School in 1980, Mattson earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Minnesota, followed by a master’s in German studies and a PhD in German studies and humanities at Stanford University.
- Her undergraduate majors were German and Latin—the latter chosen because she wanted to understand the language of requiems and masses.
- As an undergraduate, Mattson sang in the University of Minnesota Chamber Choir’s soprano section.
- By adding extra courses and taking summer classes, Mattson completed her undergraduate degree in three years.
- Mattson’s favorite German city is Berlin, where her husband, Matthias Kaelberer, grew up. (“It feels like a second home.”)
- While Mattson’s son and daughter are now young adults living on their own, cats Milo and Joey remain her faithful companions.
- During her academic career, Mattson taught at Iowa State University, Columbia University, and Rhodes College, where she was elected chair of the Faculty Promotion and Tenure Committee and later presiding officer of the faculty.
- Before coming to Carleton on July 15, Mattson served for more than two years as provost and professor of German at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio.
- A scholar of German literature and culture, she has authored Mapping Morality in Postwar German Women’s Fiction: Christa Wolf, Ingeborg Drewitz, and Grete Weil (2010) and Franz Xaver Kroetz: The Construction of a Political Aesthetic (1996).
- Mattson seeks to “open the doors wider” at Carleton for students and faculty of color and from other marginalized groups.