President Creighton's Biography

Joanne V. Creighton is an outspoken champion of the American liberal arts tradition who believes that such an education is “at its best, revolutionary. It transforms students; it awakens them to a fuller life of the mind.”

This core belief has been formed over a lifetime of scholarship and teaching. Together with her considerable skill as a strategist and leader, this belief has shaped the initiatives in the plans for 2003 and 2010 that have strengthened the academic resources of the College. Most importantly, her belief in the transformational power of the liberal arts has influenced the lives of the thousands of women who have passed through the Mount Holyoke gates since her arrival in 1996.

Creighton is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison and holds a master of arts in teaching from Harvard University and a doctoral degree in English literature from the University of Michigan. She has held faculty and administrative positions at Wayne State University, the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and Wesleyan University.