Christ to lead Smith College

by Daniel J. Fitzgibbons, Chronicle Staff

he former executive vice-chancellor and provost at the University of California, Berkeley was named the new president of Smith College on July 30.

     Carol Tecla Christ, a scholar of Victorian literature, will succeed Ruth J. Simmons, who became president of Brown University on July 1.

     Christ, 57, was Berkeley's top academic officer from 1994 to 2000 and is credited with sharpening the institution's intellectual focus and building top-ranked departments in the humanities and sciences. She played an important role in shaping Berkeley campus policy in response to Proposition 209, the 1996 California law barring the consideration of race in college admissions.

     "Carol Christ has been a leading figure at one of the nation's premier teaching and research institutions," said Shelly Lazarus, chair of the Smith College board of trustees. "Her obvious strengths across the board, her experience and dedication, make her an ideal choice for an institution committed to excellence and innovation in liberal arts education," she added. "We welcome Carol with great enthusiasm as Smith's next president."

     Christ joined the English faculty at Berkeley in 1970 after receiving her Ph.D. from Yale University. She entered Berkeley's administration in 1988, serving first as dean of humanities and later as provost and dean of the college of letters and science. After six years as provost, when she returned to full-time teaching.

     "I am excited and honored to assume the presidency of Smith College," Christ said. "It is a great institution, distinguished in its history, its faculty and its students. Public research universities and liberal arts colleges have a great deal to teach one another.

     "It is particularly exciting to lead a women's college at a time when we are assessing what the women's movement has achieved and the challenges we still have before us."

      Throughout her administrative career, Christ has maintained an active program of teaching and research, activities she expects to continue at Smith. As chair of her department from 1985 to 1988, she built and maintained one of the top-ranked English departments in the country.

     "It will be a great pleasure to welcome to Smith someone who's not only a seasoned and accomplished administrator but a widely respected scholar and teacher," said Jefferson Hunter, professor of English and a member of the search committee.

     Hunter noted that Christ's second book, "Victorian and Modern Poetics," sees the key figures Yeats, Pound and Eliot "in a strikingly new and compelling way." Christ has also become known across the country as one of the editors of "The Norton Anthology of English Literature," the preeminent classroom text in English literature. Her current scholarly project involves literary representations of death in the Victorian period.

     Christ, who was the highest-ranking female administrator at Berkeley, has a well-established reputation as a champion of women's issues and of diversity. She served as assistant to the chancellor on issues involving the status of women and particularly of women in the sciences. She describes her undergraduate education at Douglass College, the women's college of Rutgers University, as formative and has, in the words of a colleague, "an intellectual and emotional commitment to women's education."

     Although formally educated as a humanist, Christ enjoys broad respect as a champion of the sciences and is credited with attracting a number of influential scientists to the Berkeley faculty. During her administrative tenure, she strengthened the life sciences at Berkeley, advancing initiatives in neuroscience and bioengineering.
Christ will spend the 2001-02 academic year completing her teaching obligations at Berkeley. John Connolly, Smith's acting president, will continue to serve until Christ comes on board.