UW–Madison’s Taylor Odle was recently quoted in Diverse Issues in Higher Education about the increasing number of women who are leading Ivy League institutions.
Come July 2023, six of the eight universities in the Ivy League will be headed by women. Columbia University, Dartmouth College, and Harvard University each named new presidents that will take office in July, and they will join women presidents currently serving at Brown University, Cornell University, and the University of Pennsylvania.
“They are without a doubt powerhouses in their field and have proven themselves as effective, innovative leaders,” said Odle, an assistant professor in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Policy Studies. “I do think that folks should be excited about this because for better or worse in American higher education, institutions unequivocally mimic the Ivy League or the Ivy League Plus (institutions such as MIT and Stanford).”
“Now, these three new women presidents can bring new vision and energy to these roles, where women have not always been in those spaces before,” he added. “I’m excited to see what their visions might entail and how those might even diffuse down the ladder to other institutions.”
To read more of what Odle and other experts had to say about this trend and what it might mean for higher education more broadly, check out the full article in Diverse Issues.