Dr. Joanne Berger-Sweeney, an accomplished neuroscientist and the current dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, has been tapped as the next president of Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.
Berger-Sweeney, who currently serves as chief officer for Tuft’s largest school, will be the first African-American and the first woman to hold the post at the private liberal arts college founded in 1823.
“I am thrilled and excited. I am scared and awestruck,” says Berger-Sweeney in an interview with Diverse. “I am humbled that the search committee and the board of trustees are instilling this incredible, beautiful, almost 200-year-old institution to my care.”
Berger-Sweeney says that she’s excited by the potential to help forge a stronger bond between the college and the city of Hartford, which has witnessed its share of urban decay and blight over the past few decades.
“There are wonderful things the campus is doing for the city of Hartford, but it doesn’t feel at the moment that everyone’s role is headed in the same direction,” she says. “I would love the opportunity to prove to the city of Hartford that Trinity is not an ivory tower institution that doesn’t want to spread education outside of its walls.”
She says that instituting new training programs and certificates may be a way to bring the community onto campus and help improve town and gown relations. “Trinity College is an elite liberal arts institution with an urban pulse,” she says, borrowing a phrase she heard from an alumnus of the school. “I feel like I’m the luckiest person in the world.”
The selection of Berger-Sweeney makes her a historic first and one of a handful of Black college presidents to lead private, predominantly White institutions. She credits her participation in Spectrum Leadership Program — a year-long program for high-level administrators of color interested in becoming college presidents — that is sponsored by the American Council on Education (ACE). Dr. M. Lee Pelton, who is president of Emerson College in Boston and African-American, was assigned to mentor Berger-Sweeney throughout the duration of the program.
