TO: The Trinity College Community

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Sue Blanshan as Trinity’s next vice president for academic affairs. Dr. Blanshan has extensive experience in higher education, women’s colleges and the management of universities and complex organizations. She will bring important new perspectives and talents to Trinity’s ongoing quest to build our academic programs with excellence, quality and creativity.

Dr. Blanshan is a Sociologist who earned her B.A. degree at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and her Master’s and Ph.D. at Ohio State, where she also gained teaching experience. She later moved into administration at Ohio State, directing the Women’s Services Office, then developing the Office of Human Relations, and subsequently becoming a senior policy analyst in the President’s Office at Ohio State.

Later on, in the position that first put her in touch with Trinity’s core mission, Dr. Blanshan became Dean of the Hartford College for Women, the women’s college of the University of Hartford, and her position was equivalent to a president. She was an active participant with presidents in the Women’s College Coalition, and hence she had occasion to visit Trinity.

While leading Hartford, Dr. Blanshan established the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame, expanded the College’s math and science programs, led curricular reform across programs, instituted a comprehensive planning process, and established a “students come first” policy that ensured the priority of student needs in services and budgeting.

Dr. Blanshan later moved to Alabama where she became director of graduate and undergraduate programs in the Business and Management division of Birmingham-Southern College. One of her colleagues there remarked that she has a real gift for promoting interdisciplinary cooperation among faculty, particularly across the lines of liberal arts and professional studies. From that position, she had an opportunity to move out of academe and into the nonprofit sector, becoming executive director of AIDS Alabama, where she continued to develop her skills in management and fund raising while also developing expertise in AIDS policy and research.

Dr. Blanshan will bring tremendous energy, professionalism and high intellectual standards to Trinity, along with a deep respect for our mission and a keen sense of our strategic needs. She will be starting on June 7.

Please join me in welcoming Dr. Blanshan to Trinity. Please also join me in thanking Dr. Robert Preston for his years of service as our academic vice president, and wishing him well as he gets ready to enjoy a sabbatical before returning to the faculty to teach History in the Spring of 2005.