The University of Pennsylvania has appointed Whitney Soule, currently senior vice president and dean of admissions and student aid at Bowdoin College, to be its new vice provost and dean of admissions. Soule has worked at Bowdoin for the past 13 years and brings three decades of admissions experience to her new role. She previously worked in admissions at her alma mater, Bates College, in addition to Connecticut College. She holds a master’s degree from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education.

As Ron Ozio reports for Penn Today in a piece entitled “Whitney Soule named vice provost and dean of admissions at Penn,” “During her tenure at Bowdoin, the college’s diversity and selectivity have grown. Her leadership resulted in increasing numbers of students of color, first-generation students, and students on financial aid alongside a decreasing admit rate and a growing admit-to-matriculant yield rate. Soule demonstrated a strong commitment to innovation and an eagerness to lead team-based efforts to rethink and improve the recruitment and selection process to better serve students and families while simultaneously advancing institutional priorities and the academic mission…Soule is a leader with a passion for influencing and steering national discussions about college admissions and the role of higher education in driving societal progress, especially as colleges and universities continue to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic and its lasting effects.”

Congratulations to Whitney Soule on her appointment to lead UPenn’s admissions office. She will fill the shoes of Eric Furda who always had a knack for telling it like it was. Eric Furda is a longtime hero of this college admissions blog. We hope Whitney Soule, in her new role at UPenn, will follow his tremendous example while also carving her own unique path for the Ivy League admissions office as well.