College Leadership

Isabel Roche, Interim President 2019-2020

Dr. Isabel Roche was appointed Interim President of Bennington College on July 1, 2019 and served until President Walker took office on August 1, 2020. 

During her term, Isabel Roche led Bennington College through a year of exciting changes for the institution and unprecedented tumult in America. She assumed the role of Interim President in July 2019 as the College prepared for the return of students and a series of major fall events, including the reopening of the renovated Commons building, All-Class Reunion and Fall Weekend, the start of Barn restorations in the wake of a major fire, and the unveiling of several ground-breaking new initiatives. In all of these areas, fall term was a resounding success. Bennington expanded opportunities for students, brought generations of graduates together to celebrate new campus spaces, and met ambitious fundraising goals. Then, not long after students returned from Field Work Term, the novel coronavirus began to assail the US, and Bennington College shifted to remote learning along with the rest of the country. Spring term was a feat of creativity and resilience for faculty, staff, and students—all of whom pulled together to complete the year with compassion and a profound sense of shared purpose. In the summer months that followed, Isabel and the College’s COVID-19 Task Force crafted a rigorous plan for safely welcoming students back in the fall through a hybrid model that reimagines the classroom experience under the challenges of a public health crisis. With a robust and flexible plan in place for reopening campus, Isabel Roche finished her term as Interim President on July 31, 2020. 

Prior to her appointment, Dr. Roche served as Provost and Dean of the College for eight years (2011-2019) and taught French language and literature at Bennington for eight years (2002-2010). Before joining the faculty at Bennington, she taught at Williams College, The Cooper Union, and SUNY Stony Brook. 

Mariko Silver, President 2013-2019

Dr. Mariko Silver served as President of Bennington College from July 2013 until July 2019. Dr. Silver previously served as a Senior Advisor to the president of Arizona State University, as Acting Assistant Secretary for International Affairs and Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Policy in the Department of Homeland Security in the Obama administration, as Policy Advisor to Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, and at Columbia University.

As president of Bennington College, Dr. Silver led all operations of the college and became a recognized thought leader across higher education. In 2014, Dr. Silver led the design of a 10-year strategic plan for the college which emphasizes the education and development of the whole student, integration of curricular and co-curricular experiences, and a redesign of Bennington's signature Field Work Term in which every student must pursue a seven-week internship or work experience every year of their undergraduate studies. Dr. Silver also designed and implemented a reorganization of the college's governance and management, including a new approach to fundraising and alumni engagement. This work is well underway with significant support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Lumina Foundation, the Endeavor Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, among others. In the course of her tenure, Dr. Silver significantly raised Bennington College's national and international profile, more than doubled the college's endowment, increased the applicant pool by over 25% with significant growth in international student enrollment and, in fall 2017, welcomed the largest, most academically qualified, and most diverse class in Bennington's history (21% international students, 26.5% U.S. students of color), while bringing a Bennington education within reach for a broader range of students (23% Pell Eligible).

Elizabeth Coleman, President 1987–2013

Coleman served as the ninth president of Bennington College from July 1987–June 2013. Following her graduation with honors from the University of Chicago, where she was a Ford Foundation Scholar, she completed her master’s degree in English and American Literature at Cornell University, where she was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. She received her PhD with distinction at Columbia, where she was a Woodbridge and President’s Fellow. She has worked in education since that time, first as a professor of literature at SUNY-Stony Brook and then at the New School for Social Research, where she founded and served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Coleman’s vision of a liberal arts education has been recognized nationally by her place on the Select Committee of the Association of American Colleges and the board of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation; she also has served on the Council for a Community of Democracies, the Board of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, the Annapolis Group, an organization of leading independent liberal arts colleges, and as chair of the Vermont Rhodes Scholarship Trust. She has been a consultant to the Annenberg Corporation on a public broadcasting project and a visiting fellow at the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, CA, the Board of Directors of the Neurosciences Institute, the Committee for Economic Development, and the Council of Advisors for the European College of Liberal Arts. In February 2009, she delivered the closing speech at the 25th Anniversary TED Conference in Long Beach, CA, entitled “Engage.” She also gave the keynote address at the Artes Liberales General Conference in Warsaw in 2000 on “The Relationship between Liberal Education, Freedom and Democracy”, at the Getty Museum on “Art, Artists and the Challenge of Liberal Education,” and on “What Matters” at the Council of World Affairs Conference in 2011. Coleman has been awarded honorary degrees from the University of Vermont, Hofstra University, and The Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA).

Michael K. Hooker, President 1982–1986

Bennington’s eighth president, Michael Hooker, received an undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He served as dean of undergraduate and graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University, and taught philosophy at Harvard University. While at Bennington, Hooker oversaw a further refinement and integration of the winter internship term, which had been a central part of a Bennington education since its founding. After leaving Bennington, he went on to serve as president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the University of Massachusetts system, then as Chancellor of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In 1984, he was featured in Esquire’s story on the “Best of the New Generation.” He wrote articles on applied ethics and chaired a biotechnology advisory panel for the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment in addition to developing an Internet-based academic program at Chapel Hill.

Joseph Murphy, President 1977–1982

Political scientist Joseph Murphy was Bennington’s seventh president. He attended the University of Colorado, received his bachelor’s degree from Michigan’s Olivet College, and received his doctorate from Brandeis University. A recipient of a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and others, Murphy served as director of the Peace Corps’ Virgin Island Training Center on St. Croix; as assistant office secretary in the Department of Health Education and Welfare in Washington; as an associate director of the Job Corps in the Office of Economic Opportunity in Washington; and as director of Peace Corps operations in Ethiopia. He was the Vice Chancellor for Higher Education for the State of New Jersey and president of Queens College before coming to Bennington. Under Murphy’s leadership, the College established among other initiatives a distinguished visiting lecture program that would bring to Bennington several Nobel laureates among many other notable writers and public intellectuals. After leaving Bennington, Murphy served as Chancellor of City University of New York until his death.

Gail Thain Parker, President 1972–1976

Gail Thain Parker was a literature professor at Harvard when, in 1972, she was selected to lead Bennington College. During her tenure, the College opened the 120,000 square-foot Visual and Performing Arts center, which serves as a signature campus building to this day. She graduated summa cum laude from Radcliffe and received a PhD in American history from Harvard. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1963, she was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in 1964–1965. She published The Writing on the Wall: Inside Higher Education; Mind Cure in New England: From the Civil War to World War I; College on Your Own, and scholarly works in New England Quarterly, Women’s Studies, and Harvard English, and edited The Oven Birds: American Women on Womenhood 1820–1920. Following her presidency at Bennington, Parker taught at Rutgers and became a Senior Vice President and Director at PaineWebber Incorporated.

Edward J. Bloustein, President 1965–1971

A former political analyst for the Department of State, Edward Bloustein received his undergraduate degree from New York University and later, on a Fulbright Scholarship, a bachelor of philosophy degree from Oxford. He earned a PhD from Cornell University as well as a law degree, serving as the editor-in-chief of the Cornell Law Quarter. He went on to teach as a professor of law at New York University Law School. As president of Bennington, he oversaw the transition to a co-educational institution and was instrumental in a major campus expansion, including three new student houses, a new science building and lecture hall, and plans for a visual and performing arts center. After leaving Bennington, Bloustein went on to lead Rutgers University, which established the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy upon his death.

William C. Fels, President 1957–1964

An administrator with extensive experience in educational finance, William C. Fels became the fourth president of Bennington. He received his undergraduate degree from Columbia College and a Master’s degree in English from Columbia University. He held honorary Doctors of Law degrees from Middlebury College and the University of Vermont. Prior to coming to Bennington, he taught at Cooper Union and served as associate provost of Columbia University. He was secretary and then associate director of the College Entrance Examination Board, editing the College Board Reviewand The College Handbook and essentially creating the College Scholarship Service. In 1960, while at Bennington, he served on the first planning committee for President-elect John F. Kennedy’s Peace Corps. Under his leadership, the College built the Edward Clark Crossett Library, designed by the award-winning modernist architect Pietro Belluschi. He was vice chairman of the American Council on Education, vice president of the Vermont Foundation of Independent Colleges, and a director of the New England Council.

Frederick H. Burkhardt, President 1947–1957

Bennington’s third president, Frederick Burkhardt, earned degrees at Columbia and Oxford before receiving his PhD from Columbia in 1940. He led Bennington College for a decade, during which time the College became a kind of Mecca for the visual and performing arts. Visitors to campus included Jackson Pollock, Hans Hofmann, Barnett Newman, Morris Louis, Adolph Gottleib, Joseph Cornell, Larry Poons, Isaac Witkin, William Turnbull, Kenneth Noland, and many others—many of whom received their first solo exhibitions outside of the commercial galleries at Bennington. Leaving in 1957 after celebrating the 25th anniversary of the College, Burkhardt moved on to work with the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), where he served as the institution’s first president. He also served on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, directed the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, vice-chaired the National Advisory Commission on Libraries, and was appointed by two U.S. presidents to the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. He would go on to found The Darwin Correspondence Project in 1974, which has published 15 volumes of Charles Darwin’s letters, with aims to publish more than 30 volumes in all—creating the first authoritative text of Darwin’s correspondence.

Lewis Webster Jones, President 1941–1947

Bennington’s second president, Lewis Webster Jones, was an economist. Before coming to Bennington, he served on the staff of the Foreign Policy Association and the League of Nations. He received his undergraduate degree from Reed College, after which he did graduate work in economics at Columbia University and special studies at the London School of Economics and at Cambridge and Geneva Universities. He received a PhD from the Brookings Institution in Washington. Under his leadership at Bennington, the winter internship term would extend to 12 weeks from the original 8. After retiring from Bennington, he became the president of the University of Arkansas, Rutgers University, and, finally, the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

Robert Devore Leigh, Founding President 1928–1941

In 1928, four years before the College would begin, Robert Devore Leigh was recruited by the Bennington College executive committee to serve as the first president of Bennington. Born in Nebraska, raised in Seattle, he received an undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College and a PhD from Columbia University. Prior to coming to Bennington, he was the Hepburn Professor of Government at Williams College. He previously taught at Reed College and lectured at Columbia University and Barnard College. At Bennington he oversaw the construction of the original campus, which was built by more than 100 local craftsmen, many of whom had been out of work since the stock market crash of 1929. Leigh was the author, in 1929, of the Bennington College Prospectus, which outlined the “Bennington idea.” After presiding over the forging of Bennington’s structure and its early operation, he resigned to join the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University.