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September 17, 2002
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CAROL T. CHRIST WILL BE INAUGURATED
AS SMITH COLLEGE PRESIDENT
IN CEREMONY SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19

Formal Installation Highlights Three Days of Inaugural Festivities

Editor's note: reporters and photographers covering the inauguration should request media passes from the Smith News Office by 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 17. Reserved seating for the installation ceremony will be available to the media at the front of the ITT. The ceremony is expected to last approximately one hour. Copies of Christ's inauguration speech will be available to reporters immediately following the ceremony.

NORTHAMPTON, Mass.-Carol T. Christ will be inaugurated as Smith College's tenth president at a festive installation ceremony at noon, Saturday, Oct. 19, at the college's Indoor Track and Tennis Facility (ITT).


The event is free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible.


The installation ceremony will begin with a procession of Smith College faculty, trustees and past presidents, as well as delegates from more than 100 other colleges, universities and learned societies. Christ's friends and family will attend the event, as will Smith students, staff and alumnae, as well as community members and higher education leaders from around the country. Many students are expected to attend with their families, as the inauguration coincides with the college's annual family weekend.


Christ, whose appointment was announced on July 20, 2001, began her duties as Smith president in June 2002. The installation ceremony represents her formal investiture and will include the presentation of the symbols of office, the presidential medal and the Smith College mace.
In addition to the installation ceremony, highlights of the weekend include a reading by acclaimed poet Adrienne Rich; a faculty lecture titled "A Women's College for the World's Women" by Provost and Dean of Faculty Susan Bourque; a panel discussion featuring Smith alumnae, among them Gloria Steinem and Molly Ivins; exhibitions, concerts and theater performances; and fireworks over Paradise Pond.


Born in New York City in 1944, Christ attended public schools in northern New Jersey. In 1966, she graduated with high honors from Douglass College and went on to Yale University, where she received the Ph.D. in English.


In 1970, Christ joined the English faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. As chair of her department from 1985 ­ 1988, she built and maintained one of the top-ranked English departments in the country. She entered the university's administration in 1988, serving first as dean of humanities and later as provost and dean of the College of Letters and Sciences. In 1994, Christ was appointed vice chancellor and provost (and later became executive vice chancellor). During her six years as Berkeley's top academic officer, she was credited with sharpening the institution's intellectual focus and building top-rated departments in the humanities and sciences. In addition, she helped shape Berkeley's campus policy in response to Proposition 209, the 1996 California law barring the consideration of race in college admissions.


Christ, who was the highest-ranking female administrator at Berkeley until she returned to full-time teaching in 2000, has a well-established reputation as a champion of women's issues and diversity. Her first administrative position was assistant to the chancellor on issues involving the status of women. She describes her undergraduate education at Douglass, the women's college of Rutgers University, as formative and has, in the words of a colleague, "an intellectual and emotional commitment to women's education."


Throughout her administrative career, Christ has maintained an active program of teaching and research. In addition to lecturing and presenting papers to scholarly organizations and academic institutions across the U.S., she has published two books: "The Finer Optic: The Aesthetic of Particularity in Victorian Poetry" and "Victorian and Modern Poetics." She is currently teaching a seminar at Smith on the plays of George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde.


Christ has two children. Her son, Jonathan Sklute, is a recent graduate of New York University; and her daughter, Elizabeth Sklute, is a student at Mills College.


Christ's husband, Paul Alpers, is a scholar of the literature of the English Renaissance.
Smith College is consistently ranked among the nation's foremost liberal arts colleges. Enrolling 2,800 students from every state and 55 other countries, Smith is the largest undergraduate women's college in the country. It was founded in 1871.

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