Over the last quarter of a millennium, Dartmouth College, the Ivy League institution located in Hanover, Hew Hampshire, has never been led by a female president. As announced today and as of July 1, 2023, that streak will be no more. In a welcome sign of the times, the last Ivy League school to go co-educational will soon be led by a woman, Sian Leah Beilock. Beilock, the current president of Barnard College, will succeed Phillip J. Hanlon, who announced earlier this year that he would be stepping down from leading his alma mater.

As The Dartmouth Senior Staff reports for The Dartmouth in a piece entitled “Sian Leah Beilock to serve as 19th president of Dartmouth College,” “The presidential search is over: The Board of Trustees has elected Sian Leah Beilock, a cognitive scientist and the current president of Barnard College, as the next president of Dartmouth College, the College announced on Thursday. Following College President Phil Hanlon’s retirement in June 2023, Beilock will become the 19th president and the first woman named to this position in the College’s history. ‘It is an immense honor to join Dartmouth, one of the nation’s most storied institutions of higher learning, and I am even more deeply moved by what lies ahead,’ Beilock wrote in the announcement. Beilock’s selection, which comes on the heels of the College’s 50th anniversary of coeducation, was an ‘enthusiastic and unanimous’ decision by the Board of Trustees, according to Board of Trustees chair Elizabeth Cahill Lempres ’83, Th’84.”

We congratulate Sian Leah Beilock on her unanimous selection to become Dartmouth’s historic first female president. The streak of 254 years of male leadership of the College on the Hill will end in June. For the sons of Old Dartmouth, for the daughters of Dartmouth, it’s about time!