Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts, United States. 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.
Shirley Marie Tilghman, is a Canadian scholar in molecular biology and an academic administrator. She is now a professor of molecular biology and public policy and president emerita of Princeton University. In 2002, Discover magazine recognized her as one of the 50 most important women in science.
Mary Sue Wilson Coleman is an American chemist and academic administrator who served as the 13th president of the University of Michigan from 2002 to 2014, interim president of the University of Michigan in 2022, and the 18th president of the University of Iowa from 1995 to 2002.
Laurenus Clark Seelye, known as L. Clark Seelye, was the first president of Smith College, serving from 1873 to 1910. He graduated from Union College (NY) in 1857 with Phi Beta Kappa honors and membership in The Kappa Alpha Society. Seelye later studied at Andover Theological Seminary and the Universities of Berlin and Heidelberg. After serving as a Congregational Minister in Springfield, Massachusetts, he became Williston Professor of Rhetoric, Oratory and English Literature at Amherst College, where his brother Julius was Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy. Under President Stearns, Amherst College in 1865 had 17 faculty and 203 students. Seelye taught at Amherst from 1865 until his election as President of the newly formed Smith College in nearby Northampton, Massachusetts in 1873.
Johnnetta Betsch Cole is an American anthropologist, educator, museum director, and college president. Cole was the first female African-American president of Spelman College, a historically black college, serving from 1987 to 1997. She was president of Bennett College from 2002 to 2007. During 2009–2017 she was Director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art. Cole served as the national chair and 7th president for the National Council of Negro Women from 2018 to 2022.
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.
Joanne Vanish Creighton is an American academic who served as the 16th President of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, from 1996 to 2010. On August 10, 2011, the Haverford College Board of Managers named her interim President of Haverford College, replacing Stephen G. Emerson, who resigned.
Elizabeth Blanchard (1834–1891) was an American educator who was the seventh president of Mount Holyoke College.
Louise F. Cowles (1842–1924) was an American educator who was the 8th president (Acting) of Mount Holyoke College from 1889–1890. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1866 and received a master's degree from Smith College in 1892. She taught a Mount Holyoke for a number of years before and after becoming president.
Florence Matilda Read was an American college president who was raised in Delevan, New York. She was president of Spelman College from 1927 to 1953 and wrote a book about the historically black college.
Mignon Talbot was an American paleontologist. Talbot recovered and named the only known fossils of the dinosaur Podokesaurus holyokensis, which were found near Mount Holyoke College in 1910, and published a scientific description of the specimen in 1911. In 1909 she became the first woman elected to be a member of the Paleontological Society. In the state of New York, she contributed to the Helderbergian crinoids and studied the faunas of Stafford limestone.
Cornelia Maria Clapp was an American educator and zoologist, specializing in marine biology. She earned the first Ph.D. in biology awarded to a woman in the United States from Syracuse University in 1889, and she would earn a second doctoral degree from the University of Chicago in 1896. Clapp was the first female researcher employed at the Marine Biological Laboratory, as well as its first female trustee. She was rated one of the top 150 zoologists in the United States in 1903, and her name was starred in the first five editions of American Men of Science.
Joia Stapleton Mukherjee is an associate professor with the Division of Global Health Equity at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Since 2000, she has served as the Chief Medical Officer of Partners In Health, an international medical non-profit founded by Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, and Jim Kim. She trained in Infectious Disease, Internal Medicine, and Pediatrics at the Massachusetts General Hospital and has an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Mukherjee has been involved in health care access and human rights issues since 1989, and she consults for the World Health Organization on the treatment of HIV and MDR-TB in developing countries. Her scholarly work focuses on the human rights aspect of HIV treatment and on the implementation of complex health interventions in resource-poor settings.
Betsey Bayless was the 16th Secretary of State of Arizona from September 5, 1997, until January 6, 2003. She was appointed to fill the unexpired term of fellow Republican Jane Dee Hull. She was elected to a full term November 3, 1998.
Matina Souretis Horner is an American psychologist who was the sixth president of Radcliffe College. Her research interests included intelligence, motivation, and achievement of women. She is known for pioneering the concept of "fear of success".
John W. Hennessey Jr. was an American academic and educator. He spent most of his life in academia, as professor, dean, and provost. He was Third Century Professor Emeritus at Dartmouth College, where he served for eight years as dean of the Tuck School of Business, during formative years at Tuck. After retiring from teaching applied and professional ethics, he became the provost of the University of Vermont, later serving as interim president.
Marie Mercury Roth was an American synthetic organic chemist. She was the first female Ph.D. candidate at the chemistry department of University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she worked with William Summer Johnson. She received her Doctorate of Philosophy in 1951 for the Application of the Favorskii rearrangement to the problem of angular methylation.
Sonya Stephens is the former president of Mount Holyoke College and the author of Baudelaire's Prose Poems: The Practice and Politics of Irony as well as the editor of A History of Women's Writing in France and Translation and the Arts in Modern France.
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.
