Valerie Smith (academic)

rdf:langString Valerie Smith (academic)

rdf:langString Valerie Smith

rdf:langString Valerie Smith

rdf:langString Brooklyn, New York, U.S.

rdf:langString American

rdf:langString U.S. administrator, academic, and professor

rdf:langString Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, U.S.

rdf:langString Jill Dolan

rdf:langString President of Swarthmore College

rdf:langString Dean of the College, Princeton University

rdf:langString Valerie Smith (born February 19, 1956) is an American academic administrator, professor, and scholar of African-American literature and culture. She is the 15th and current president of Swarthmore College. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, she is a graduate of Bates College and the University of Virginia. She taught at Princeton University from 1980 to 1989 and at University of California, Los Angeles from 1989 to 2000. In 2001, Smith returned to Princeton upon being appointed the director of Princeton's African-American studies program. From 2006 to 2009, Smith was the founding director of Princeton's interdisciplinary Center for African American Studies. In July 2011, the university's president appointed Smith the Dean of the college, tasked with "Princeton's undergraduate curriculum, residential college system, and admission and financial aid offices." While at the university as dean, she removed numerical targets for the university's grading policy, expanded socioeconomic diversity, created an international residential college exchange program, and created the Office of Undergraduate Research of Princeton University. She left Princeton after a 23-year tenure to assume the presidency of Swarthmore College in July 2015; she was inaugurated in October. As president she increased the college's endowment to its 2016 market value of $1.85 billion and started the $450 million fundraising campaign called "Changing Lives, Changing the World" on April 6, 2017.