Board of Trustees selects tenth college president

John Palmer Senior Editor

The Vassar Board of Trustees unanimously elected Catharine “Cappy” Bond Hill as the tenth President of Vassar College, to succeed President Fran Fergusson July 1. Hill is currently the provost of Williams College, where she has taught economics since 1985. The Board of Trustees announced this decision on Jan. 10. During Hill’s first visit to Vassar, which started on Thursday, Jan. 26, she met with current students, administrators, faculty, and staff to discuss the College’s current operations and future plans.

Students had the opportunity to ask Hill direct questions during two open sessions held on Jan. 26 and Jan. 27.

During a meeting with students on Jan. 26, Hill responded to a concern of Emily Cogswell ’07, who asked how Hill’s Williams experience would affect Vassar.

“I have no interest in making Vassar another Williams,” replied Hill. “I’m interested in helping Vassar be the college it wants to be.”

Later, Hill emphasized her willingness to listen to the community before initiating sweeping changes to Vassar: “To do that, the community needs to understand what its priorities are,” said Hill during an interview on Friday morning.

Hill said her first order of business when she arrives this summer will be to “continue to talk to people and listen to people…find out what people think is working.”

When asked what she would radically change about Vassar, Hill replied, “I have a huge amount of homework to do…We need to figure out where we want to be going and where we want to be in five years and 10 years.” Hill said that she plans to work with faculty to ensure that Vassar’s facilities are up-to-date and serve the needs of professors. In particular, she mentioned that she supports the College’s current plans to improve Vassar’s science facilities.

At the Jan. 26 meeting with students, Jason Wu ’07 asked Hill for her thoughts on the ALANA Center.

Hill said, “It’s an incredibly diverse society we’re living in…part of what we’re doing at these liberal arts institutions is to bring diverse students together…[and] to make sure that groups feel safe on campus, but not forgetting that we’re making a community…It’s important to have an environment where people feel comfortable about having those conversations.”

Hill, the John J. Gibson Professor of Economics at Williams, has already been invited to guest lecture in Economics classes at Vassar, and she also expressed interest in teaching a course at Vassar on the economics of higher education. Hill’s current research centers on the affordability and access of higher education. She co-authored a paper, “Affordability: Family Incomes and Net Prices at Highly Selective Private Colleges and Universities,” which will be printed this fall in the Journal of Human Resources.

“People think economists would make good [college] presidents...for the wrong reasons,” said Hill. She said that the true value of an economics expert is not in balancing budgets and managing the endowment, but in understanding the constraints of trade-offs and the benefits of offering incentives. Hill noted that she sees her goal as a successful president to “articulate and build a consensus around a vision of an institution.”

One major challenge that Hill sees for all liberal arts colleges in the coming years is to fend off criticism of the risings costs of higher education.

“The public, including the government, has lost faith in what we do [at liberal arts colleges],” said Hill. “We’re in a world where what we’re doing is extremely important…We’re teaching students how to think critically and tackle problems.”

According to Hill, criticism of higher education comes from “public critiques about who we hire, who we admit, and what we teach,” with special attention given to the rising costs of college.

To help maintain a diverse and highly skilled pool of students, Hill stressed the need for a strong financial aid program. “Vassar has a high share of students on financial aid, which is great,” she said. “We need to make sure that our packages are adequate.”

When asked how to best improve academics at Vassar, Hill replied, “Supporting and nurturing a strong faculty so they can do their jobs here.”

Hill said that sees the strength of the College depending not only on faculty, but the entire community. “These kinds of schools are incredibly labor intensive,” she said. “It’s the people that make the place work: faculty, administrators, and staff.”

Also, Hill noted that she is interested in supporting the faculty’s interests in multidisciplinary programs.

“Supporting multidisciplinary areas have become increasingly important,” said Hill, adding that Vassar needs to “figure out [how to fund them] within the College’s current departmental structure.

“We need to figure out a mechanism to support them,” she said. “Adding things is easy. Moving things around is harder.”

Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid David Borus said he was “excited at the prospect of her arrival and to work with her.” Borus said of her current research on affordability and access that, “I’m sure she’ll be continuing her work in that area and I look forward to working with her on it. We want to make sure we’re doing whatever we can to help students who could benefit by being here.”

Additional reporting by Anita Varma, Editor in Chief