Kathleen McCartney, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and an internationally recognized authority on child development and early education, was named the 11th president of Smith College on December 10, 2012. McCartney’s appointment is effective July 1, with her inauguration scheduled for October 19.
The Gerald S. Lesser Professor in Early Childhood Development at Harvard, McCartney was named dean of the Graduate School of Education in 2006; she became only the fifth woman dean in Harvard’s history. During her tenure, she led a 25 percent growth in HGSE’s faculty, doubled the school’s financial aid for master’s students, and dramatically increased fellowship support for doctoral students.
McCartney’s research program concerns early experience and development, and she has published more than 150 articles and chapters on child care, early childhood education, and poverty. She is a member of the NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, which summarized the results of their longitudinal study in Child Care and Child Development. She also co-edited Experience and Development, The Blackwell Handbook of Early Childhood Development and Best Practices in Developmental Research Methods.
The first in her family to go to college, McCartney received her B.S. in psychology summa cum laude from Tufts University, where she now serves as a trustee, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Yale University. In one of her first addresses to the Smith community, McCartney celebrated the college’s long tradition of providing access to a Smith education to any talented and ambitious young woman who seeks it. “We must remain committed to recruiting and supporting students regardless of the resources their secondary schools could offer; regardless of their family’s circumstances; and regardless of society’s low expectations for some,” she said. “Education for women and girls is the human rights issue of our time.”
She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Education, and in 2009 she received the Distinguished Contribution Award from the Society for Research in Child Development. McCartney is also a Fellow of the American Education Research Association, the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society.
