ABOUT DR. MOLLY EASO SMITHDr. Molly Easo Smith, a teacher and scholar of Shakespeare and Renaissance drama, comes to Manhattanville as the College’s eleventh president after a long and distinguished career as a faculty member, scholar, and administrator.
Born in Chennai (formerly Madras) in India, Dr. Smith graduated from Ethiraj Women’s College and Madras Christian College in the University of Madras, with BA and MA degrees in English, respectively, and from Auburn University with a Ph.D. in English Literature in 1988. She has lived and worked in several states in the United States as well as in Scotland, where she taught Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama at the University of Aberdeen. Dr. Smith has published two books on Shakespeare and his contemporaries as well as several essays on Renaissance drama and literature. Recently, she embarked on a journey of reflection by writing short stories based on her childhood in the southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
Dr. Smith believes in the transformative power of education, in inclusion and diversity as foundations for institutional excellence, and in the imperative to engage individually and collectively with the larger question of our place and purpose in the world and the universe. Passionately committed to student, faculty, and staff development and the concept of life-long learning, she brings to Manhattanville a deep interest in traditions and a desire to chart bold and sustainable directions for the College by engaging the entire community.
She attributes her deep commitment to education to the early influence of several women in her family, including her mother and grandmother, and her success as a scholar-teacher and administrator to faculty and colleagues in India, Scotland, and the US. Her most recent inspirations have been former presidents Mother Frances Burnett, Mother Grace Dammann, and Mother Eleanor O’Byrne, whose visionary leadership continues to propel the life of the College. To her spouse, Dr. Duane Howard Smith, who is both her most ardent supporter and her most candid friend, she owes more than she can account for in words.
President and Dr. Smith are proud grandparents of five-year old Eldan Christopher Smith, and parents of Christopher Owen Smith.
Friends, Check out the Presidential Inauguration Web site at Manhattanville College:
Dr. Molly Easo Smith is being inaugurated as the President of Mahattanville College in New York on April 7, 2010.
(News forwarded By Mathew Jacao)
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