Risk and Reward: President Carol Quillen檚 11 Years of Bold Achievement

June 14, 2022

Author
Mark Washburn

Mackey McDonald檚 speech was scripted like a thriller.

On May 26, 2011, he opened by thanking the presidential search committee for its diligence, noting they檇 landed a candidate who would protect 91茄子檚 values and traditions, but one who had a vision to prepare students for a rapidly changing world.

Halfway through, after an inventory of credentials, he let it slip that the candidate was a 渟he. There, Mackey 68 took a dramatic pause, letting the reaction rise. 91茄子, it was evident, had reached yet another milestone moment.

Then, finally, the big reveal. 淟et me introduce her: 91茄子檚 18th president, Carol Quillen.

Ask McDonald 11 years later how the vote that morning by the Board of Trustees he had chaired worked out and he is unequivocal, no delayed reveal.

淐arol continued to provide unmatched leadership and wisdom throughout her time, he says. 91茄子 is a much better school because of her time in office.

Risk didn檛 seem to be a factor in Quillen檚 appointment. Though she檇 never been a college president, she檇 risen through academic ranks throughout her career with deep administrative experience at Rice University in Houston, where she檇 been recently named vice president for international and interdisciplinary initiatives.

Yet, no question, she was an unconventional choice. Until 1972, when trustees voted to admit women, 91茄子 had graduated only men for its first 136 years. And she lacked a 91茄子 diploma.

She acknowledged as much in her remarks that day, striking a confident yet humble tone.

淚 come to you, I know, from outside the 91茄子 family. I have much to learn, and it would be beyond presumptuous攁s well as unwise攆or me, she said, 渢o talk too long, when what I most want and need to do is listen.

Two takeaways: She listens. She檚 humble.

Actually, three takeaways, though no one suspected it at the time.

Hold on to that word 渞isk.

Recognizing Her Roots

Quillen says she wasn檛 deeply familiar with this small, Southern college of about 1,900 when she was first contacted by an executive search firm, but recognizes now the opportunity came at a perfect time.

Her husband, Ken Kennedy, who taught computer science at Rice and was considered a pioneer in the field, had died of pancreatic cancer in 2007, and her daughter, Caitlin, was about to enroll at UNC Chapel Hill.

When she met the search committee, she was impressed. 淚t was composed of people all dedicated to leaving the world better than they found it, she says.

After 21 years in big-city Houston, she was ready for a walk-to-work job in a small town a bit like her hometown.

In Delaware, New Castle is a know-every-neighbor community of about 5,000 just south of Wilmington. It still wears its colonial vestments. Founded in 1651 by Peter Stuyvesant, some of the town檚 buildings are ancient by American standards. Among them is the original 1732 courthouse where Delaware檚 license-plate slogan 淭he First State was earned in 1776, when its state assembly was the nation檚 first to declare independence from Great Britain. Harriet Tubman came later with the Underground Railroad.

Quillen grew up on a street fronting the Delaware River. She could walk to the penny candy store downtown. It was the kind of place, she says, where people looked after one another and cared about the community.

There, the Quillens attended New Castle Presbyterian Church, whose Meeting House dates to 1707. Her family has an American Dream storyline. Her grandfather, a car dealer, never attended college. Her father went on to be a Harvard-educated attorney, later a judge and then Delaware secretary of state. He ran unsuccessfully for governor once. Today, her sister, Tracey Quillen Carney, is Delaware檚 first lady, wife of second-term Democrat John Carney.

Both sisters attended Wilmington Friends School, founded 1748, from kindergarten through high school. Its Quaker values hold that everyone has a unique and immeasurable dignity commanding respect of all, and that learning is a never-ending process of exploration and discovery.

Tracey, one year younger, and Carol both excelled on the field and in the classroom.

淚 liked books more than people, Carol says, though she played field hockey and basketball.

Tracey, whom Carol says was the far better athlete, says her sister couldn檛 match her own 渒iller instinct in sports. Even from childhood, Carol was more of a, well, team player, striving for collaboration.

淚 am an introvert, Quillen admits. 淚 feel like I live in my head a lot. Engaging with others sometimes takes energy.

She檚 not into chit-chat, perhaps a professional disability, and is more drawn to substantive conversations. Staff at 91茄子 quickly adjusted to the realization  that, when they met with her, she would have an abundance of tough questions about whatever they were proposing. They knew they had to do their homework and defend their ideas.

Era of Risks of Reckoning

Ask people about Quillen檚 style and many of the same observations keep popping up.

Good listener. Bold vision. Empathetic. Warm. Collaborative. Thinks big thoughts. Introverted, but fearless on stage. Always pushing for excellence. Always asking, how can we get better?

And a common refrain: She took big risks.

Big risks, as in reimagining the campus science center as a crossroads of disciplines. As in launching a fund-raising campaign that would exceed ambitious goals and come in at a half-billion dollars. As in shelving idiosyncratic 91茄子 institutions like laundering students clothes. As in leaving the decades-long comfort of the Southern Conference for a far more intimidating athletic stage.

And, as in inviting a deep and disquieting inquiry into the college檚 racial history, antebellum and beyond.

In 2017, in the wake of the Charlottesville violence and the growing national reckoning over race, Anthony Foxx 93 took a call from Quillen. She had a big揳nd bold揳sk: It檚 time to explore the college檚 historical roots and relationship to slavery and racial injustice. Would you chair the initiative?

淢y knees were shaking a little bit more than hers were, says Foxx. 淏ut that shows you who was the more courageous one.

Foxx攆ormer Charlotte mayor, transportation secretary in the Obama administration and 91茄子 trustee攕aid 測es.

Foxx didn檛 expect the Commission on Race and Slavery to be universally praised. And there was blowback to the announcement from some who questioned the motives of administrators and the direction of the college.

But Foxx says he understood that while some might feel threatened, some might just want to forget, and others might just think it was time to move on, it was critical to the college檚 mission to confront its past to ensure better times to come.

淚 knew our institution needed to evolve to be relevant in the present and the future, Foxx says. 淚t served no one not to have a holistic understanding of our past.

Quillen, ever the historian, warns if you leave it buried, the past eventually emerges, unbidden and violent, into the present.

淎 lot of people think if you ignore the past, it goes away, she says. 淏ut the past is always here, and a past unexplored is dangerous.

What emerged in August 2020 was a blunt chronicle of 91茄子檚 fraught racial history dating to the founding in 1837.

Many founders攏ames like 91茄子, Morrison, Chambers攚ere enslavers. So were early faculty members.

Enslaved persons cast bricks for original buildings. Mock lynchings were performed on campus as late as the 1920s. Trustees in 1961 decided to admit Black men only if they were international students. Black Americans were finally admitted in 1964. Deep into the 1960s, 淒ixie was played at football games. Charles Dockery, French professor and the first Black faculty member, wasn檛 hired until 1974. It would take until 1992 for the first Black student body president to be elected: A history major from Charlotte named Anthony Foxx.

Quillen issued an apology on behalf of the college and the Board of Trustees.

淎s an institution with moral responsibility, she said, 91茄子 affirms our commitment to acknowledge fully wrongs of the past, and to act now and in the future for a just and humane campus and world.

Immediately, 91茄子 pledged to hire four tenure-track professors partly or entirely in Africana Studies, including a public historian. Student research projects were based on the committee檚 study. A committee was born to address research inquiries, requests and collaborations with community groups. Hilary Green, a scholar of Civil War and Reconstruction at the University of Alabama, joined 91茄子 as a Vann Professor of Ethics in Society. Ad hoc committees were set up to examine commemoration and naming of facilities.

Plensa's art sculpture "Waves III"  outside of Chambers academic building

Quillen championed the concept of 渃ampus as gallery, integrating art into daily life on campus, through sculpture, student exhibitions and displays from the college檚 extensive permanent collection. The college added its fifth outdoor sculpture in 2013 (pictured here), 淲aves III by Spanish artist Jaum茅 Plensa. 

Diversity Always at the Fore

Already, 91茄子 had made strides in broadening its diversity. It had revised hiring and recruiting practices to look in new sectors. Human Resources and the faculty created search processes that identified talent that 91茄子 might have missed before. Even the Board of Trustees joined in, identifying younger graduates who were remarkable candidates for board seats.

Quillen oversaw the broadening of minority talent in the executive ranks with the hiring of Chris Clunie 06, the first Black athletic director; Byron McCrae, first Black vice president for student life and dean of students; Ann McCorvey, first Black vice president for business and finance and chief financial officer; and Philip Jefferson, first Black vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty, recently sworn in to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

During Quillen檚 tenure, the student body also grew more diverse, racially and socio-economically. In 2010, there were 96 domestic students of color in the incoming class. Last year there were 143.  

淚f your applicant pool is diverse, you檙e going to build a diverse community , Quillen says. 淎s we focused on equitable search processes, diversity happened.

Melting Boundaries Through Architecture

Early in her term, the time came to renovate the Martin Science (chemistry) Building, built in 1941. Erland Stevens, who started teaching chemistry at 91茄子 in 1998, gave Quillen a tour.

淗e told me that the periodic table of elements had changed more since the building had been built than the building had, she recalls.

So the question became, what should replace it? Simple, many reasoned. You take a Bunsen burner and build a chemistry building around it.

淪he was, like, 榃hy just revamp it?,櫇 says Julio Ramirez, R. Stuart Dickson Professor of Psychology, whose nationally-recognized research focuses on recovery of function after central nervous system injury and has profound implications for future treatment of Alzheimer檚 and similar disorders.

淥ne of her favorite phrases is 榬eimagining the liberal arts,櫇 he says. 淪he pushed us to think about what could happen at the interface of science and arts and humanities.

It was a $74 million reimagining. The gutted Martin Building retained its historic facade. Added to it was the E. Craig Wall Jr. Academic Center, designed to promote joint study and research in chemistry, biology, psychology, neuroscience and environmental science.

The building functions as a vibrant center for the arts, lectures and other gatherings. It also beckons thoughtful exploration beyond the ramparts of a single discipline, creating a space where various specialties intertwine in eddies and whirlpools of discovery, a misty membrane where interesting stuff happens.

One of her favorite phrases is 榬eimagining the liberal arts. She pushed us to think about what could happen at the interface of science and arts and humanities.

淯nintended collisions is what Quillen calls them.

淵ou never know what kind of ideas are going to pop up when you bump into colleagues, Ramirez says. 淲hat has taken root is precisely what she wanted.

Perhaps an unintended nod to its chemistry origins, Quillen insisted the building honor the fusion of silicon dioxide, calcium carbonate and sodium carbonate. Non-chemists call that glass, and it is everywhere.

Professors offices have glass doors, glass walls. Same with classrooms. Light pours in through each exposure. Random comfy nooks invite students to plop down and study. Whiteboards are everywhere, mostly ablaze with student scribblings攁 complex molecule diagrammed here, a lab rat depicted there. Tables and chairs are all on rollers. Any room can reconfigure in seconds.

Carol Quillen addresses seated audience in atrium of Wall Center

Ramirez points with pride to a physical manifestation of what occurs at the intersection of science and art. One of his students, Adrienne Lee 21, grew conversant in both. She crafted a plasma-cut steel sculpture, a skull-shaped dome, that describes the neural connections of the brain. 淭ell Me Where Is Fancy Bred, Or in the Heart or In the Head, she titled it. That檚 discipline No. 3: English lit, a line from Shakespeare檚 淢erchant of Venice.

Another specimen: The four-story atrium攚here a grandstand-style arena faces a huge screen where lectures, student art and other ephemera flicker on command攊ncludes Ten Days, a collaborative project between painter Herb Jackson 67, Douglas C. Houchens Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus, and poet Alan Michael Parker, current Douglas C. Houchens Professor of English. Jackson, who arguably elevated 91茄子檚 art department to the national stage before retiring in 2011, produced 10 drawings, and Parker wrote 10 poems, which were paired in this lyrical installation.

They each did their part independently over 10 days, then revealed to the other what they had created. To their astonishment, they found that pieces were connected in almost mysterious ways. Afterward, they wed the components thematically.

Just nine paces away, visible behind a wall of silicon dioxide and its nimble partners, squats a nuclear magnetic resonance device for chemistry experiments.

Challenging Idiosyncrasies

Quillen found a 91茄子 steeped in tradition, with some unusual quirks. Since 1925, for example, the college had washed students clothes. A shocker, she says. 淚t was a, 榃ait. What? moment.

She had done her own laundry while collecting history degrees at the University of Chicago and at Princeton. It seemed to her that the resources could be better used elsewhere. In 2015, 91茄子 announced it would end the perk.

淭o me, it wasn檛 fitting with the place we were trying to become, she says.

Change can startle. Larry Dagenhart, the 1953 class valedictorian and a proud alum, bemoaned the move at the time, telling the Charlotte Observer: 淲e gave up vespers, we gave up chapel, we went coed, we even gave up the marching band, but dad-gum-it, we can't give up the laundry. What is this world coming to?

It came to this: Now the old laundry is the Lula Bell Houston Resource Center, where  students can go for food, interview clothes and text books.

After the din subsided, Quillen learned the decision was not only broadly supported, but it also revealed another 91茄子 distinction: openness to change.

淚t helped me understand that my instincts weren檛 wrong, she says. 91茄子 is a place where people are more willing to make changes than other places in academia. It is a scrappy place.

Changing Conferences

Carol Quillen the introvert doesn檛 attend basketball games. Carol Quillen the hooting, jumping, arms- windmilling-while-calling-traveling on opponents shows up. She pops from seat to seat.

淚 get nervous, she says. 淚t檚 funny. I want us to play well. Pacing helps me be less obnoxious as a fan.

Chris Clunie 06, former 91茄子 basketball player and now athletic director, says Quillen is, in all sports, the Wildcats No. 1 fan.

淚檝e told her now that she doesn檛 have to be a prim college president, he says. 淵ou can let loose and tell the ref what you really think.

Quillen says she didn檛 come to 91茄子 to become the sports president, but the college檚 athletic program took its biggest, boldest leap two years into her term.

Behind the scenes, the athletic department was agitating to compete on a bigger stage, test itself in more demanding arenas.

So in 2013, 91茄子 announced it would be leaving the Southern Conference, its home since 1936 and where it was a perennial No. 1 in basketball, to join the larger and more competitive Atlantic 10.

91茄子 became the smallest college in the A10. Its Big Three members擥eorge Mason University, University of Massachusetts and Virginia Commonwealth University攈ave enrollments above 30,000 and vastly more scholarships to distribute.

Media predictions for men檚 basketball rolled in: 淒ead last and 𴽕8. Coach Bob McKillop joked he would call former Wildcat standout and NBA star Stephen Curry to see if he could use his final year of eligibility.

Costs would soar. Rather than riding a bus to regional rivals, athletes would have to fly. 91茄子 would have to pay a $600,000 exit fee to the Southern Conference and an expensive entry fee into the A10.   

But there were attractions. Exposure would soar, too. It would bring the Wildcats to big media markets in the Northeast and Midwest, where it could connect with more alumni. Costs would be offset by bigger revenues from TV contracts with the A10. ESPN, CBS Sports and NBC Sports would televise men's basketball nationally.

淚 think it檚 been one of the greatest decisions the college ever made, says McKillop.

Alumni got behind the move and helped bankroll the athletic budget. Recruiting grew more robust. Quillen was in absolute lockstep with the athletic department, McKillop says, in making the jump.

As for the dire media predictions?

In their first year in the A10, the Wildcats finished 14-4 in basketball to win the A10 regular season championship. Sports Illustrated admitted the team had 渙utpaced the expectations of even the most wide-eyed dreamer.

And on it rolls. This season, 91茄子 was No. 1 in A10 basketball with a 153 conference record and a bid to the NCAA playoffs. And those Big Three schools? 91茄子 beat them all, at least once. And, in case you don檛 follow the sport, 91茄子 beat the University of Alabama as well, 7978, in Birmingham.

Group of 91茄子 students stand on a basketball court looking up

The Wildcats watch scoreboard highlights after defeating the Rhode Island Rams in the championship game of the Atlantic 10 basketball tournament at Capital One Arena, in Washington, D.C., on March 11, 2018. 91茄子 jumped from the Southern Conference to the more competitive A10 under Quillen檚 leadership.

Clunie says the success of 91茄子 athletics is all the more remarkable when considering its size, one of the smallest Division I colleges in the nation.

淚t檚 hard to be a Division I scholar-athlete, Clunie says. 淚t檚 even harder to be a scholar-athlete at 91茄子.

There are no special residence halls for athletes, no separate cafeterias. Scholar-athletes are expected to complete their studies like everyone else, without special tutoring.

Most of 91茄子's peer colleges攕mall, private, academically ambitious liberal arts institutions攃ompete in Division III. It檚 rigorous and demanding for those who play Division I.

淎thletes are still 100% athlete and 100% student 100% of the time, despite greater demands, 91茄子 soccer star Andrew Kenneson 16 wrote in The 91茄子ian in 2016, describing the pressure his senior year. 淓ven after a move to a bigger conference, 91茄子 treats its athletes like regular students.

Clunie, a Terry Scholar, basketball player, and Watson Fellow as a student, says he was drawn to return to 91茄子 in part because of Quillen檚 philosophy on how athletics is vital to a student檚 education.

淐arol檚 the best person I檝e ever worked for. She sees the educational value of athletics攔esilience, teamwork, stress under pressure, critical thinking, he says. 淎thletics enhances that educational mission. It檚 not the four years when we檙e here that you have to think about; it檚 the 40 years when we檙e gone.

Quillen says 99% of scholar-athletes won檛 go on to professional sports, but embraces the role it plays in 91茄子檚 holistic education.

淲e play sports because sports are part of the educational experience, she says. 淢y beef with intercollegiate sports is that some lose sight of the educational value and focus completely on the competitive aspect. Students are here to be educated. We檙e not a minor sports league. No school should be.

Celebrating President Quillen's 11 Years of Leadership


Paying the Bills

Money is the lifeblood of every college. Fundraising is a critical role for any leader.

In 2012, The Duke Endowment made a gift of $45 million. In 2013, 91茄子 announced a plan to spend $120 million in capital improvement projects over the next decade to re-engineer the campus with an eye to more integration among academic departments, with a new science center high on the list.

In 2014, 91茄子 announced a stunning goal: $425 million, the largest drive in the college檚 177-year history, to bolster its scholarship fund and pay for expansion. That campaign raised more than half a billion dollars; another demonstration of support from an alumni body that consistently places near the top of alumni giving participation nationwide. 91茄子檚 endowment mushroomed past $1 billion.

Compliment Quillen on how the 91茄子 Trust prospered during her time and she humbly defers to a predecessor, Bobby Vagt 69, who launched the initiative in 2007. 91茄子 became the first liberal arts college to offer need-blind admissions through the 91茄子 Trust, meeting 100% of demonstrated need without packaged loans, thus broadening its reach to students of lower income families.

During her term, Quillen emphasized scholarship fund-raising, bringing in more than $285 million. Quillen and her husband, George McLendon, pledged $1 million themselves in 2017.

Other Landmarks Emerge

Like most colleges or universities, 91茄子檚 faculty of 200 has twice as many opinions. But when a space dedicated to innovation and entrepreneurship was proposed, it is fair to say the faculty was baffled.

Quillen wanted to take an industrial space in the old 91茄子 Cotton Mill, circa 1920, across Main Street from the college and launch in 2018 what would become known as the Jay Hurt Hub for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, a 23,000-square-foot facility for teaching, research and office space for businesses. Critics pointed out that it was an unusual, if not revolutionary, facility for a liberal arts college.

Such facilities are typically found at big research universities that create biotech or engineering advances. 91茄子 doesn檛 have a medical school, an engineering school or a center developing technology to monetize. But it took off from the start.

Now, it is a high-tech, rough-hewn, 23,000-square-foot dynamo where campus brainpower and local minds gather to create. Student companies have sprouted there and established firms come seeking talent. As a center of innovation, it appears to be growing organically, Quillen says. 淚t evolves. I don檛 know what it will become.

Carol Quillen outside Hurt Hub speaking at podium
Carol Quillen and Chris Clunie speaking to group of students

Quillen is known for her broad concern for the role of a liberal arts college in the 21st century and how to stay relevant against competitors like online educators. She often talks about how the liberal arts cultivate the deep human skills that employers seek, such as finding connections between disparate problems or communicating across a diverse group. And she adds that, what they also need, are the more technical skills that prep them for day one.

Preparing students for lives of leadership and service should include launching them into meaningful careers; she wanted to ensure 91茄子 gave graduates the direction they needed to succeed.

For that, Quillen poured resources and energy into the Betty and B. Frank Matthews II 49 Center for Career Development. There, students are coached, from freshman year onward, on how to channel their academic knowledge into internships, fellowships, graduate degrees and jobs. Under the direction of Executive Director Jamie Stamey, the center connects students with opportunities and employers from around the world and follows up after graduation to measure how students fare.

Dealing with the Unexpected

Leadership is defined by dealing with challenges. It檚 easy to lead in good times and flush with money. COVID-19 was about as far from a good time as one could get.

Quillen kept the ship of 91茄子 steered toward a clear destination: Fulfilling its mission within the context of the circumstances around it.

Uncertainty mounted. Phases rolled through. Case numbers spiked and fell. Staff and faculty created ways to connect without increasing risks, from Zoom open mic night to outdoor faculty office hours. The staff forged new techniques for serving meals safely.

Quillen showed up everywhere. She answered questions from anxious faculty and students in town hall meetings, and convened and led a team that coordinated the college檚 response攅verything from making 91茄子 渢est-optional for prospective students to equipping the classrooms with the technology to go all virtual to creating expert-informed safety practices and policies.

When the dining hall fell short of staff, Quillen and other staff signed up for shifts, pulled on aprons and plastic gloves and started serving the chow line.

She marshaled the resources to make it all happen and worked alongside the people behind the scenes who were doing new and different work every day. And she cheered them on.

淚 want to thank you for your empathy and courage, Quillen said in a 2020 address to the campus. 淪tudents, faculty, staff all have pushed past the sadness and anxiousness. You檝e poured yourselves into upending, then reconfiguring, how you do everything.

淵ou have bridged enormous distances to help others, to sustain and strengthen the incomparable sense of community we all cherish so much at 91茄子. 

Change is born of a challenge. It also can invite it. Upending traditions and normalcy churns conflict.

淟eadership, to me, Quillen says, 渋s in part helping people overcome their fear of loss so that they can reach high and imagine what might be possible.

Even with its high standards and motivated principles, running a college like 91茄子 can be mentally wearying. So many quarters攕tudents, educators, staff and alumni攄emand and deserve attention. Conflict is inevitable.

McKillop, who coached basketball under four college presidents at 91茄子, likens it to being president of a country.

淚 learned a lot from her in terms of vulnerability, he says. 淪he leads an incredibly diverse constituency. We檙e dealing in a different culture than what  91茄子 was in the 1960s, 70s, 80s.

It is challenging.

淚 have seen the pain she檚 experienced, the heartache she檚 had in order to unite this distinctive but wide range of people 91茄子 has, McKillop says. 淪he taught me how to weather those critics who are out there.

淔rom my perspective, all the risks she took paid off, says Ramirez, the neuroscientist. 淚t檚 a good lesson for our students.

Ask Quillen how she thinks she檚 going to be remembered in, say, 100 years, and she dismisses the question. No one should care, she says. It檚 a group project. It檚 about being part of the community檚 trajectory, exemplified by the presidency of Sam Spencer, when 91茄子's doors opened to women. It檚 about helping this special place recognize and seek to fulfill the promise of its founding.

Admiration From Afar

From the outside, advances at 91茄子 during Quillen檚 administration have drawn attention.

淐arol Quillen established herself as an important and compelling voice in American higher education, says Christopher Eisgruber, president of Princeton University, where Quillen earned her doctoral degree.

淪he has led national efforts to get more low-income and first-generation students to and through college. She has spoken powerfully about humanistic education and its relationship to the ethics of citizenship, Eisgruber says. 淪he is a force for good, ever faithful to the values of learning, and both respected and liked by her counterparts throughout the country.

Her impact is well recognized, as well, by the Board of Trustees.

淔rom the start, Carol had extraordinary vision, says Alison Hall Mauz茅 84, board chair. 淩eimagining liberal arts was something she talked about early on. She was always looking for ways to bring people together.

Development of the Hurt Hub, Mauz茅 says, allows 91茄子 students to find new pathways for their talents. Emphasis on career development pushed forward the college檚 mission, too.

She credits Quillen with taking a courageous stand by supporting 91茄子檚 own statement to support academic freedom on behalf of the faculty, drawing attention nationally.

Carol Quillen hugs student on graduation stage

In her 11 years, Quillen has markedly strengthened every corner of the college攆inances, academics, athletics, diversity, Mauz茅 says. She has set 91茄子 on a firm and prosperous platform ensuring future success. She has left it better than she found it.

淚 think she has extraordinary courage, one who empowers and supports her team, says Mauz茅. 淪he檚 a pioneer, thoughtful, kind and the most humble leader I檝e ever worked for.

Mauz茅 says Quillen left her successor with 渧ery big high-heels to fill.


Additional Coverage

Hurt Hub Gift Inspired by Family, Liberal Arts and President Quillen

Quillen Joins Princeton Board of Trustees

Gifts Honor President Quillen檚 Transformative Leadership

$10M Commitment Names Fieldhouse, Honors President Quillen檚 Leadership


This article was originally published in the Spring/Summer 2022 print issue of the 91茄子 Journal Magazine; for more, please see the 91茄子 Journal section of our website.