Hobart and William Smith Colleges leadership change: Jacobsen is leaving, Gearan is coming back
Randy Gorbman Kelly Walker www.wxxinews.org randy-gorbman kelly-walker
Hobart and William Smith Colleges President Joyce Jacobsen announced Tuesday she is stepping down as president; and the Board of Trustees announced that former longtime president Mark Gearan will return to that role.
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WXXI News
A surprise leadership change is coming to Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva.

In an email to the campus community on Tuesday, Hobart and William Smith Colleges President Joyce Jacobsen announced that she will step down as president of the Colleges. Following a one-semester sabbatical, Jacobsen will join the faculty as a Professor of Economics.

In an email that followed shortly, from the Hobart and William Smith Colleges Board of Trustees, the co-chairs announced that Professor Emeritus of the Colleges Mark Gearan will return as the 30th president of Hobart and 19th president of William Smith.

Jacobsen joined Hobart and William Smith as president in 2019. In their email, the Board of Trustees noted her leadership throughout the pandemic as well as her accomplishments in curricular development, athletics enhancements and philanthropy, recent record-breaking years in fundraising.

After leaving the Colleges in 2017, Gearan served as President in Residence at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and in 2018 was appointed Director of the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School.

At the time of his departure, he was the longest serving president in the Colleges’ history. He had that position for 18 years.

Previously, Gearan’s background includes a stint in the Clinton White House as Assistant to the President and Director of Communications and Strategic Planning.

He also served as director of the Peace Corps from 1995 to 1999.