SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. (AP) - Lynn Pasquerella, a philosopher and
medical ethicist and the current provost at the University of
Hartford, was named the 18th president of Mount Holyoke College.

Trustees of the world's oldest women's college selected
Pasquerella on Saturday, following a unanimous recommendation by a
16-member search committee. She was scheduled to be introduced to
the Mount Holyoke Community during a ceremony on Monday, but will
not officially assume the presidency until July 1, 2010.

Pasquerella will succeed Joanne Creighton, who is stepping down
at the end of the 2009-2010 academic year.

Pasquerella said she was honored and privileged to return to the
South Hadley, Mass., campus that "transformed" her life. She
received her undergraduate degree from Mount Holyoke in 1980 and
noted that while the college's "distinctive mission" remains
unchanged, the school had become more diverse over the last three
decades.

"There's much more diversity with respect to the student body
and the faculty. It's a very international campus these days and
that is one of our strengths," she said Monday.

The Connecticut native earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at Brown
University and was a professor for 19 years at the University of
Rhode Island. In 2004, she became the associate dean of URI's
graduate school and was later named vice provost for research and
dean of the graduate school.

She was named provost and chief academic officer at Hartford in
2008.

Pasquerella said she plans to make Mount Holyoke part of a
research team she leads with the Africa Center for Engineering
Social Solutions, an organization that seeks to improve living
conditions and promote entrepreneurship for women in an
AIDS-ravaged portion of Kenya.

ounded in 1837, Mount Holyoke was the first and one of five
remaining "Seven Sisters," a group of prestigious and
academically-rigorous liberal arts colleges for women in the
Northeast.