1996

Shown here posing during

a pre-inauguration lighting
check, the brand-new presi-
dent was constantly in the
campus spotlight throughout
her first year.

Creighton
Marks
Ten Years
as MHC
Jim Gipe

President
  www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu
 By Avice A. Meehan ’77

Decisive
 Decade
Joanne Creighton walks the bounds of Mount Holyoke every day. Tall and
auburn-haired, Creighton is a familiar sight as she circumnavigates
Upper and Lower Lake, loops around the Equestrian Center, or makes
an early Monday morning pilgrimage to the golf course in the com-
pany of her husband, Tom. Always to be found at Creighton’s side—
or, more likely, tugging at the leash—is the irrepressible Maisie.
Like Creighton, the energetic beagle is known to demonstrate a
purposeful single-mindedness.
 1997
1996 Creighton welcomes then-
Past MHC presidents David Truman Secretary of State Madeleine
and Elizabeth Topham Kennan ’60 Albright. She was that year’s com-
join Creighton for inauguration mencement speaker and received
weekend. an honorary doctorate.

1996 1997
Creighton christens her namesake The president serves cake to stu-
crew shell with river water and dents to celebrate Mary Lyon’s
champagne. 200th birthday.

“I have always been a walker,” says Creighton, president of “She has been an extraordinary steward of Mary Lyon’s
Mount Holyoke since 1996. “It’s a beautiful campus, a won- legacy and of this institution,” said Leslie Anne Miller ’73,
derful place to walk. I have always felt about this campus chair of the board of trustees. “Joanne has rather a shy side
that it is so restorative, that it has such power. [Walking] to her which some can initially find off-putting, but when
allows you to connect to this mesmerizing place, to admire you get past that, you see a strong, committed individual.
the natural beauty and architectural loveliness of it.” I think this has been a 24/7 labor of love.”
The poetry not- The positive benchmarks are unmistakable. The college’s
withstanding, Creigh- structural budget deficit has been wiped out; budgets now
“W hat are the highs ton’s perambulations balance—albeit with difficulty—and the draw on the en-
serve a purpose for dowment has decreased. The endowment itself has moved
of the job? One  a woman described past the $500 million mark. Applications hit a record high
as “intensely practi- in 2006 at 3,065; the overall percentage of students admit-
is sharing in the  cal.” Simply put, she ted stands at a respectable 53 percent. The academic quality

intellectual energy likes to keep an eye

on things—to the
of students is high, and they are emblematic of the college’s
global reach. The faculty is younger, more diverse, and
and moral passion occasional dismay,
Creighton admits, of
attracting outside grant support. The curriculum has been
refreshed. The physical plant has been renewed, newly
of the place, the her staff. Even after
a decade, there are
built Kendade Hall has unified the interdisciplinary science
center, and Blanchard, where generations of students went
finest educational many details—large for mail and courses in classics, has morphed into a vibrant
and small—that bear campus hub. One capital campaign has been completed; a
environment I have watching, from newly second is about to commence.

planted trees to the
ever been part of.” quality of the con-
tinental breakfasts
offered in each dorm to the deliberations of the Investment
Committee of the board of trustees.
The ten-year milestone puts Creighton in a rarefied
group. Nationally, only about a quarter of college presi-
dents serve longer terms; on average, presidents serve fewer
than seven years, according to the American Council on
Education. And some decade it’s been. For all intents and
purposes, Mount Holyoke has been transformed under the
leadership of this shy scholar of twentieth-century English
literature with an ear for a well-turned phrase, a passion for
planning, a practical cast of mind, and a magpie’s insatiable
curiosity—not to mention an eye for talent at the senior-
staff level.
Left to right: Paul Schnaittacher, Jim Gipe, Kimberly Grant, Jim Gipe
“I am very satisfied with the progress we have made, but
it is hard to maintain,” says Creighton, who sat for an inter-
view in the relative quiet of mid-August. Two weeks before
the arrival of the first students, Mead Hall was surrounded
by a chain-link fence. Mary Lyon Hall shook periodically as
highway crews, working around signs reading “rough road
ahead,” excavated Route 116 right up to the college gate.
Creighton arrived at Mount Holyoke with a similarly
rough road ahead of her. Setting the college to rights re-
quired difficult decisions and the sacrifice of a few tradi-
tions: need-blind admission, dining in every residential
dorm, and a placid relationship with the college’s Alumnae
Association. Yet even with the shift to need-sensitive admis-
sion, Mount Holyoke still admits more students from less
affluent families—those with reported incomes of $30,000
or less—than its peers. After deep expressions of concern,

10  www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu
 1998
The president pouts in a Faculty
Show “Alice in Wonderplan” skit
spoofing the Plan for 2003.
1999
Creighton tells Helen Huarca Witte
’00 she’s won a Truman Award.
students have adapted to dining options that regionalize
meals in six dorms, along with Blanchard and a lunch spot
in Kendade. With a rancorous two-year conflict over con-
trol of alumnae contributions to the Annual Fund behind
them, the college and the association are working together
amicably and collaboratively, holding regular meetings and
working on joint programs.
“Joanne gave us a sense of renewed pride and confi-
dence in the college,” says Harriet Levine Weissman ’58, an
avowed fan and trustee. “She came when the college was
not in good financial straits, and her leadership has brought
financial stability. For that alone, she will go down in the
history of the college.”
Creighton began her tenure at MHC with a famously
open mind about its mission as a women’s college. Ten years
later, she fully embraces the “historical coherence and
Top, left to right: MHC Archives, Ted S. Warren, Will Creighton, Ben Barnhart; below: Jim Gipe
resonance” of that mission and Mount Holyoke’s capacity
for global leadership, showing the way through high-profile
initiatives that bring together leaders from women’s colleges
around the world, as well as activities that range from visits
to a new women’s college in Kenya to leadership in the
Women’s College Coalition.
Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Fall 2006
2002
Joanne and husband Thomas
Creighton, on the president’s
sabbatical in South Africa
2004
MHC hosts a conference on
“Women’s Education Worldwide:
the Unfinished Agenda” that
attracts leaders from women’s
institutions on five continents.
“I hear her stepping out and really committing to some-
thing that could be risky,” says Rochelle Calhoun ’83, execu-
tive director of the Alumnae Association and former dean
of students. Creighton’s commitment to women’s education
worldwide “is a coming together of the personal, the politi-
cal, and the intellectual,” Calhoun says. “There’s a political
reason that women’s education has not been improved—it
challenges the politics of the world, and we need to rally to
that. Joanne sees the centrality of Mount Holyoke in that
agenda as the oldest women’s college.”
Women’s colleges remain a tough sell to prospective
students, and Creighton sounds the opposite of satisfied or
smug as she looks ahead. “The most significant issue stems
from underfunding. Mount Holyoke is more excellent than
its resources would lead you to believe, given its endow-
ment and the [financial] neediness of its students,” she says,
making an emphatic case for increasing the college’s endow-
ment in order to support both students and faculty.
Creighton was tested early. Little more than a year into
her presidency, with the Plan for 2003 ready to ship to the
printer, student protests erupted over a panoply of is-
sues that included need-blind admission and religious and
cultural life on campus. Nine years later, the experience
remains vivid and startling. It was, Creighton says, the first
time she had been “thrust into the limelight as a person of
allegedly malign motives.”
At a faculty meeting that May, Creighton spoke about com-
promise. She had, in response to student demands, agreed to
add distinct cultural spaces to the Plan for 2003, and defined
her approach to leadership. “One of my goals in this planning
process has been to move us away from a too-personalized
presidency, she said. “I am not the mother, or father, or arbiter
of all things. I am committed to the view that we must all be
responsible adults in a self-governing community if we are to
be a strong and self-confident Mount Holyoke.”
2001
Marking the start of renovations to the Art Museum
11
Presidential
 Ref lections
By Joanne V. Creighton
If destiny shapes our ends, it was at
work in my alliance with Mount Holyoke
College over a decade ago. After being
nominated for the presidency, I initially had
doubts about whether it was the right job for
me, but inexorably, step by step, I came to
see that the opportunity was right, the time
was right, and the match might well be right,
too, between what Mount Holyoke needed
and what I could offer. I sensed that I was
the favored candidate of the search commit-
tee, a flattering and head-turning experi-
ence. Moreover, after deciding to check out
the campus with my family one afternoon in
late autumn 1994, I remember feeling lured
in by the mesmerizing presence, power, and
beauty of the campus: “Yes, I can imagine
myself here,” I instinctively thought. I read
everything I could find about the college and
engaged in probing conversations with the
people I met. The more I learned, the more I
was drawn in: I could see what needed to be
done; I could make a positive difference; and
I would stretch and grow in the bargain.
I’m not sure why I felt so confident. At
that time, the budget was out of balance and
worsening each year; the admission outlook
was weak and worrisome; morale was low;
and a free-floating anxiety had set in about
the sustainability of Mount Holyoke as a
top-notch college. That the whole of the Col-
lege seemed somehow less than the sum of
its parts, however, was to me an irresistible
challenge. I could see its impressive history
and parts; I could sense its latent power
and potential. When I accepted the position,
the welcome in Chapin Auditorium was so
warm and hopeful that I was determined
to reciprocate this leap of faith. From that
moment, I pledged myself to demonstrating
that the whole of this special college could,
in fact, be much greater than the sum of
its parts. And that, I believe, is now proven
beyond a doubt. Mount Holyoke has never
been stronger or more robust, more ready to
take on the world.
I’m proud of what we have together
accomplished these past ten years and
know we are positioned for greater heights
in the years ahead. The key to our success
12 
has been getting all constituents working
together and pulling in the same direc-
tion. That we can do because our resonant
mission compels and inspires our best
collective effort. But, when I first arrived,
the mission was unacknowledged, unarticu-
lated, and uncelebrated. Not so now. Ar-
ticulating the mission was the essential first
step of the planning process. Summing up
the essence of Mount Holyoke in a single
sentence warms my English professor soul:
We reaffirm our commitment to educating
a diverse residential community of women
at the highest level of academic excellence
and to fostering the alliance of liberal arts
education with purposeful engagement in
the world. This mission continues to say
it all; it has been the touchstone of institu-
tional renewal.
I feel extraordinarily blessed to serve
as president of this inspirational college, an
experience that has deeply enriched my life
and afforded many highs and, admittedly,
a few lows—the latter including the student
sit-ins of spring of 1997, the Joe Ellis scandal
that landed us in the national press in the
summer of 2001, and the painful dispute
with the Alumnae Association that erupted
about the same time. But now, in retrospect,
these seem like unfortunate bumps in the
road on what has overall been a remark-
ably harmonious and “very fast” ride
forward—on what Mary Lyon has strikingly
called “this great intellectual and moral ma-
chine”—out of disunity, disarray, and fiscal
disequilibrium and into collective purpose,
balanced budgets, record-high numbers
of applicants and fund-raising totals, an
ever-stronger faculty and student body, vital
new academic centers, beautiful new indoor
and outdoor spaces, and increased national
and international presence. Now unmistak-
able confidence and buoyancy infuse our
community. Mount Holyoke is recognized
on campus and off as an institution on the
move, boldly reasserting its leadership in lib-
eral arts and women’s education worldwide.
What are the highs of the job? One is
sharing in the intellectual energy and moral
passion of the place, the finest educational
1996
on inauguration day
environment I have ever been part of. It is
gratifying to note how it has appreciably
improved these last several years. What
a privileged job I have, really, serving as
an advocate for such a fine institution!
Moreover, I, who have no daughters of my
own, have now the pleasure of seeing the
palpable coming to selfhood of wonderful
young women, so full of earnestness, pur-
posefulness, and joie de vivre. And speaking
of children, that’s how I view our various
campus building projects—music, art, sci-
ence, Blanchard, Newhall—each a precious
child more beautiful and wonderful than the
next. I’m eager to get our next offspring, the
new residence hall, into the ground late this
fall; it too will grace our family of memora-
bly classic and with-it buildings.
Perhaps the greatest joy is being part
of a team of smart and dedicated people
working together on something greater than
any one of us. We know that the excellent
and purposeful education offered by Mount
Holyoke College is a pearl of great price
and an endangered commodity. There is no
more powerful instrument for educating the
next generation of women for enlightened
citizenship and leadership. No cause is
more worthy of our energy and support. No
need is greater in our trouble-ridden world
than the kind of graduates we produce. A
variant on “the little engine that could,”
Mount Holyoke College has been improb-
able from the beginning. It has continued
to overachieve, surpassing any reasonable
expectation one might have about the influ-
ence of such a small college in such a large
world. We must continue to defy the odds
Jim Gipe
and secure the legacy of this extraordinary
institution. What could be more rewarding
and fun than that? 
www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu
 2004 2005
Creighton joins alumnae and major Creighton institutes community
media representatives for the first breakfasts to provide a casual
of several collaborations in New forum in which to share news and
York City. answer questions.

2004 2006
Creighton meets with the associa- At a trustees gathering with Leslie
tion’s Strategic Planning Committee A. Miller ’73, chair of the board,
to discuss how the association can and Richard E. Neal, U.S. represen-
help the college educate students tative and trustee
for global citizenship.

If her style is far from parental (or micromanaging, for fundamental importance, such as the strategic plans or
that matter), there’s little doubt who leads the self-govern- major grant proposals.
ing community. Described by Dean of Faculty Donal O’Shea “I am always the writer. I will not relinquish that be-
as “collaborative and consultative with a vengeance,” cause I know … that there is great power in putting things
Creighton tests her own ideas as strenuously as she tests together,” she says, making the wry observation that most
everyone else’s. She is, O’Shea observes, “supportive by writing can be improved after “ten, twenty, forty” drafts.
being tough,’’ a skeptical listener. It’s a perspective echoed Creighton guards her privacy as closely as her words,
by Kori Binette ’04, who worked with Creighton on her saying that it is hard to have “a more personal role” within
senior thesis about the college community when students and colleagues alike
mother-daughter
“I ’m proud of relationships in the
novels of Joyce Carol
what we have Oates. “She made it
very easy and ap-
together accom- proached the project
Top, L. to R.:Patrick McMullan, Paul Schnaittacher, Fred LeBlanc, Fred LeBlanc; below, Emily Freeman

as if we were equals,
plished these not as though I was a
lowly student,” says
past ten years Binette, now a gradu-
ate student in English
and know we at the University of
Massachusetts, and
are positioned coauthor with Creigh-
ton of a scholarly
for greater article. “She wouldn’t
let me rest with an 2006
heights in the easy answer, and she
wasn’t prepared with
MHC’s delegation to Dubai Women’s College, where our students
taught a leadership workshop

years ahead.” an answer herself.”

A self-described
magpie—“if I hear a
good idea, I pick it up,” she says—Creighton discovered a
gift for pulling together disparate ideas while writing her
own undergraduate honors thesis about the unity of James
Joyce’s collection of stories, Dubliners. That gift carried
Creighton through a dissertation and successively complex
administrative roles. Although she has little time these
days for scholarly writing, Creighton nonetheless wields
the power of the pen—and revision—for documents of
see the official role before the person. That aloofness,
balanced by what some describe as candor about her own
views and feelings within a smaller circle, is part of what
colleagues say gives Creighton an ability to understand the
college, what makes her effective rather than popular.
“Joanne is a perfect example of what a Mount Holyoke
education can do for a person,” says Leslie Anne Miller,
who believes that Creighton has blossomed over the decade
into a self-confident leader. “She’s a product of a Mount
Holyoke education; she just got it later in life.”

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Fall 2006 13