Reflections on a Presidency

Erin Cohn ’00 | Director of the Wurtele Center for Leadership

Thanks to Kathy's leadership, Smith has made enormous strides in expanding access for students and has subsequently attracted a beautifully diverse student body. As an alumna, I can’t tell you how proud I was at the announcement that Smith was eliminating loans from financial aid packages and replacing them with grants. This policy creates space for brilliant future Smithies of all backgrounds to experience the exceptional educational opportunities of this place, and to leave Smith unsaddled with debt.

I appreciate the ways Kathy has advanced opportunities for students to create connections between their academic work and their growing sense of purpose. Under her leadership, Smith has made great strides in its ability to help students put all the pieces of their undergraduate experience together, such that they’re better equipped to tell the story of what they’ve learned here and how they might apply it in their lives and careers beyond Smith.

Michael Thurston | Provost and Dean of the Faculty

Kathy is an exemplary collaborative leader. Because of her leadership, the college has evolved to reaffirm the value of a liberal arts education by developing ways for students to gain solid experience and translate their disciplinary knowledge and expertise into possible career pathways. Areas like leadership and entrepreneurship, long of interest to students, are now available for real and meaningful development. Curricular and co-curricular experiences that help students to develop capacities for living in diverse communities, for acknowledging and addressing racial power structures, and for redressing injustice are hallmarks of the college’s development during Kathy’s tenure.

Marianne Yoshioka | Dean of the Smith College School for Social Work

When I think of Kathy, I think of warm and genuine, clever and razor-sharp, effective and powerful. Kathy’s record shows that she knows how to zero in on what is most important. She has moved this entire campus forward, not only in terms of infrastructure but, perhaps more importantly, in terms of culture. There have been enormous obstacles set before her in this work. Even so, she has succeeded in bringing great and important change to Smith.

Andrew Guswa | L. Clarke Seelye Professor of Engineering

There are many things asked of a college president, involving everything from academics to finance, from fundraising to student life. Amid all of these competing demands, Kathy has always maintained an enthusiasm for the core mission of our institution: teaching and scholarship. Her response to the climate crisis has been particularly meaningful. When I was director of the Center for the Environment, Ecological Design, and Sustainability, we could see the tremendous potential that Smith has with respect to faculty and resources—including the botanic garden, the spatial analysis lab, and the MacLeish Field Station—to study the environment and help our students take on environmental challenges. For many institutions, that might be sufficient. But Kathy wanted Smith to lead by example and make serious and substantive progress toward carbon neutrality. The implementation of ground-source heating and cooling will make a real, positive impact on carbon emission reduction and positions Smith as a leader for the environment. I can think of no better place for a student to learn and live their commitment to sustainability.

Daphne Lamothe | Professor of Africana Studies

I have long admired the time and energy Kathy has invested in broadening student access to financial aid, as well as her commitment to diversifying Smith’s faculty and curriculum. Over the last 10 years, her tremendous leadership in these areas has led to noticeable, indeed impactful, improvements in equity and accessibility within all aspects of campus life. That she accomplished these things during a period of great social and political turmoil, including a public health crisis, makes it all the more admirable. On a more personal note, as someone who works in literary studies, I have also appreciated Kathy’s appreciation of the importance of the humanities (and her love of poetry!), particularly at a juncture in which the value of a liberal arts education seems to be perpetually up for debate in American society.

Photograph by Aundrea Marschoun AC