Smith College Names Swarthmore Provost as Its Next Leader
Posted September 20, 2022
By John O. Harney
Comings and Goings …
SARAH WILLIE-LE BRETON
Smith College selected Swarthmore College Provost and Dean of the Faculty Sarah Willie-LeBreton to be the 12th president of the Seven Sisters and Five Colleges institution in Northampton, Mass.
She’ll succeed Kathleen McCartney, who announced that she will step down in 2023. A sociologist, Willie-LeBreton studies social inequality and race and ethnicity.
As Swarthmore provost, she championed tenure lines in environmental studies as well as in peace and conflict studies. She is the author of Acting Black: College, Identity, and the Performance of Race.
Curry College President Kenneth K. Quigley Jr. announced he will retire in summer 2023, after serving as president since 1996. Prior to his presidency, he was a management professor at the college.
Endicott College named Wells Fargo executive Thomas N. Kushner as new dean of the Curtis L. Gerrish School of Business at Endicott College, succeeding Interim Dean Aileen Torrance. Kushner recently worked with Wells Fargo Securities as a managing director and senior relationship manager for the Global Institutional Client Group and, before that, with UBS.
Massachusetts College of Art and Design named former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh’s Chief of Policy Planning Joyce Linehan as the college’s new assistant to the president for special projects, and Massachusetts Historical Society Assistant Director of Research & Executive Producer Katy Morris as content producer on the marketing and communications team as MassArt gears up for its 150th anniversary.
Hartford International University hired Benjamin Breault, the recent program coordinator of Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) at Manchester Community College, to be the university’s new registrar and associate director of financial aid.
Kia Jing Tan, the CFO of China-based Ambow Education, which owns Boston’s Bay State College, resigned after more than a year of declining enrollment and financial struggles at the for-profit college.
Berkshire Innovation Center (BIC) named career coach and Roger Williams University Assistant Professor of Industrial Technology Dennis Rebelo to the new position of chief learning officer, where he will integrate educational programming and community learning opportunities. He will also help launch the BIC Manufacturing Academy, a U.S. Commerce Department-funded initiative the center is building with MIT, the Mass Tech Collaborative and local partners.
The Augusta-based Central Western Maine Workforce Development Board hired Erin Benson as its new executive director. Benson recently served as senior director of workforce services at Eastern Maine Development Corporation, and the program supervisor of workforce development at Maine’s Aroostook County Action Program.
Three-term Massachusetts state Sen. Adam Hinds will leave his seat representing the state’s westernmost district, to become CEO and executive director of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate. Hinds will succeed the institute’s Interim Executive Director Sue Heilman.