President of Colgate Will Take the Helm at Swarthmore

Rebecca S. Chopp, president of Colgate University since 2002, will become the new president of Swarthmore College, the college’s Board of Managers announced on Saturday. Ms. Chopp takes over the position being vacated by Alfred H. Bloom, who is leaving to run New York University’s new campus in Abu Dhabi. Mr. Bloom has been Swarthmore’s president since 1991.

Ms. Chopp, a scholar of religion, women’s studies, and American culture, received her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago and her B.A. at Kansas Wesleyan University. She has been provost at Emory and dean of the divinity school at Yale, and is well known as a feminist theologian.

At Colgate she oversaw one of the most successful campaigns in the university’s history, with a goal of $400-million. She will be the first female president of Swarthmore, a Quaker institution founded in 1864.