Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of historically female colleges in the Northeastern United States. The college was founded in 1837 as the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary by Mary Lyon, a pioneer in education for women. Mount Holyoke is part of the Five College Consortium in Western Massachusetts.
The Seven Sisters are a group of seven liberal arts colleges in the Northeastern United States that are historically women's colleges: Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and Wellesley College are still women's colleges. Vassar College is currently a coeducational college and Radcliffe College was absorbed in 1999 by Harvard College.
Holyoke Community College (HCC) is a public community college in Holyoke, Massachusetts. It offers associate degrees and certificate programs, as well as a transfer program for students to earn credits for transfer to other colleges. It was the first community college established in Massachusetts, as it was founded by the city's school board in 1946, while others were subsequently chartered under state jurisdiction after 1960.
Dina Marie Fisher, known professionally as Dina Eastwood, is an American reporter, news anchor, and actress. She is the former wife of actor and film director Clint Eastwood.
Mary Emma Woolley was an American educator, peace activist and women's suffrage supporter. She was the first female student to attend Brown University and served as the 10th President of Mount Holyoke College from 1900 to 1937.
Indira Viswanathan Peterson is a literary critic and the David B. Truman Professor of Asian Studies at Mount Holyoke College. She is a specialist in South Asian Studies.
Anna Jane Harrison was an American organic chemist and a professor of chemistry at Mount Holyoke College for nearly forty years. She was the first female president of the American Chemical Society, and the recipient of twenty honorary degrees. She was nationally known for her teaching and was active nationally and internationally as a supporter of women in science.
Mary Williamson McHenry was "credited with bringing African-American literature to Mount Holyoke College," where she was Emeritus Professor of English. McHenry also introduced her then student, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, to Five Colleges faculty member James Baldwin during the 1980s. Parks would later credit McHenry with her success.
Mallika Dutt leads Inter-Connected, a new initiative that uplifts the independent nature of self, community and planet to advance collective wellbeing. She brings together the power of ancient wisdom and spiritual practices with contemporary technologies and storytelling. Dutt is the founder of Breakthrough, a human rights organization dedicated to making violence against women unacceptable.
Mona K. Sutphen was the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2011. She is currently a partner and Head of Investment Strategies at The Vistria Group, a Chicago-based private equity firm founded by Marty Nesbitt. From 2013 to 2019, she was a partner in Macro Advisory Partners LLP and from 2011 to 2013 was a managing director at UBS AG, covering geopolitical risk, macro-policy trends and their impact on the global economy. She held a diplomatic position in the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration.
Lynn C. Pasquerella is an American academic and the 14th president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Before she assumed this position, she was the 17th president of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, serving from 2010 to 2016. She was a professor of philosophy at the University of Rhode Island for 19 years before becoming URI's Associate Dean of the Graduate School. From 2006 to 2008 she was vice provost for research and dean of the graduate school at the University of Rhode Island. She was the Provost of the University of Hartford from 2008-10. She also currently serves as the President of the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
Sheena S. Iyengar is the S.T. Lee Professor of Business in the Management Department at Columbia Business School, widely and best known as an expert on choice. Her research focuses on the many facets of decision making, including: why people want choice, what affects how and what we choose, and how we can improve our decision making. She has presented TED talks on choice and is the author of The Art of Choosing (2010).
Shoba Narayan is an Indian author, journalist and columnist. She wrote the award-winning Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes (2003). She is the author of four books.
Emma Perry Carr was an American spectroscopist and chemical educator. Her work on unsaturated hydrocarbons and absorption spectra earned her the inaugural Francis P. Garvan Medal from the American Chemical Society in 1937.
Judith Gedney Tobin is an American medical examiner.
Yau Tsit Law (1888-1961) was a Chinese Christian educator, and one of the first Chinese women to graduate from Mount Holyoke College.
Grace Jecks Paul was a Tamil Christian educator from Sri Lanka. She was principal at three girls' schools in Sri Lanka, and a founding member of the Ceylon Federation of University Women in 1941.
Lalita Vakil is an Indian embroidery artist known for her contributions to the preservation and promotion of Chamba Rumal, a traditional form of handkerchief embroidery from Chamba district in Himachal Pradesh.
Helen Griffith was a professor at Mount Holyoke College, a teacher at colleges for African Americans in the American South, and an author.
Eileen Shanley Kraus was an American business executive who broke the glass ceiling to be the first woman to run a major bank in Connecticut. She was inducted into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame in 2002.
