Kathleen McCartney

Kathleen McCartney was the 11th president of Smith College. A summa cum laude graduate of Tufts

University, she earned master’s and doctoral degrees in psychology from Yale University.

Since assuming the presidency in July 2013, McCartney has focused on outreach to the Smith

community, as well as on raising Smith’s visibility on issues important to women around the world. She

has launched important conversations on college access and affordability, campus discourse, design

thinking and the liberal arts, women in STEM, and the capacities students need to succeed and lead.

She has forged educational partnerships with leading organizations, including the Tuck School of

Business at Dartmouth College, edX, and MassMutual. Under her leadership Smith has engaged noted

architectural designer Maya Lin to re-envision its historic Neilson Library in the context of its renowned

Frederick Law Olmsted campus.

McCartney was previously dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE)—only the

fifth woman dean in Harvard’s history. She doubled HGSE’s financial aid for master’s students, raised

funds for international faculty research, and dramatically increased fellowship support for doctoral

students. A signature accomplishment of her tenure was the creation of a three-year doctorate in

educational leadership developed in collaboration with the Harvard Business School and Kennedy

School of Government.

An authority on child development, McCartney’s research has focused on childcare and early

childhood experience, education policy, parenting, poverty, and behavior genetics. She has authored

some 150 articles and book chapters and was a principal researcher for a 20-year study of the effects

of child care on child development. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,

the National Academy of Education, the American Educational Research Association, the American

Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society. She was elected to the Board of

Directors of the American Council on Education (ACE) in 2015. She was the recipient in 2009 of the

Distinguished Contribution Award from the Society for Research in Child Development. In recognition

of her thoughtful and creative leadership at HGSE, The Boston Globe in 2011 named her one of

the 30 most innovative people in Massachusetts. In 2013, she received the Harvard College Women’s

Professional Achievement Award, which honors an individual who has demonstrated exceptional

leadership in her professional field.