A Legacy of Access and Opportunity

Since becoming Hamilton’s 19th president on July 1, 2003, Joan Hinde Stewart has presided at more than a dozen major building dedications on campus. The enhancements represent a quarter of a billion dollars — a level of investment not seen since the construction of the Kirkland College campus in the mid-1960s and the building boom that coincided with the presidency of Hamilton’s ninth and longest-serving president, Melancthon Woolsey Stryker, Class of 1872, who presided from 1892 to 1917.

But Joan Stewart’s tenure at Hamilton, which will conclude with her retirement in June, will be remembered less for the physical transformations that took place on campus and more for the work she did to align the College even more closely with the original intent of its founder. Missionary Samuel Kirkland established Hamilton’s predecessor, the Hamilton-Oneida Academy, in partial response to the clash of cultures he witnessed when the white settlers streamed into Central New York following the American Revolution. George Washington supported Kirkland’s vision of an academy where the children of the Oneida Indians and the white settlers would be educated together, and Alexander Hamilton lent his name and agreed to serve as a trustee.

Two centuries later, in changes both subtle and dramatic, Stewart has led an effort to diversify the Hamilton student body, ensuring especially that the College remains accessible to hard-working and talented students from low- and middle-income families. Two noteworthy actions illustrate the point: the decision in 2007 to reallocate merit aid to need-based financial aid, and the decision in 2010 to make admission decisions without considering an applicant’s financial need (also known as need-blind admission). Fewer than 50 U.S. colleges and universities practice need-blind admission and meet the full demonstrated need of the students they accept; Hamilton is one of them.

But Stewart, the first in her family to attend college when she enrolled at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn in 1961, realizes from personal experience that many nontraditional students face a culture shock when matriculating at a powerhouse liberal arts college, so she has supported introducing programs and initiatives that address the needs of a new generation of Hamiltonians. These include the addition in 2010 of a second multicultural team of students called Posse, this one from Miami; the 2011 opening of the Days-Massolo Center as the focal point for exploring human interactions and difference; the creation of First-Year Forward for enhanced career counseling and preparation for students with exceptional potential and financial need; and the Student Emergency Aid Society, which supports needs of students whose financial barriers are extraordinary.

The goal, Stewart has emphasized, is not just to enroll a student body representative of society, but also to help ensure that all students have the opportunity for an equal educational experience once they arrive on College Hill. In some ways, admitting a more racially, ethnically, socioeconomically and geographically diverse student population is the easy part; ensuring that all students have similar opportunities is the greater challenge. It’s a message Hamilton’s 19th president took to a White House summit of educational leaders in 2014.

Stewart’s tenure has also coincided with a series of important anniversaries. For a long time Alexander Hamilton was the forgotten founding father, but his place in American history has been restored by several biographies released to coincide with the 250th anniversary of his birth in 1755 (and 1757, there being some question about the actual date) and the 200th anniversary of his death in 1804. Alexander Hamilton, published in 2004, is perhaps the most authoritative account of Hamilton’s life, and Stewart conferred on its author, Ron Chernow, an honorary degree in 2005. The wildly popular musical Hamilton, which opened on Broadway earlier this year, is further evidence of renewed interest in the College’s namesake.

Stewart has expressed great fondness and admiration for the first secretary of the treasury, about whom she has written and spoken often. He was “a phenomenal logician, a riveting speaker and an elegant writer,” Stewart said in her 2015 Convocation address. “He wrote and spoke with passion, in beautiful full sentences.” Indeed, Hamilton’s rise from an orphaned and impoverished immigrant to one of the most influential men in early America — a transformation made possible through philanthropy and education — are themes that resonate with Stewart personally and professionally as president of a college that describes itself as a “school of opportunity.”

Many have suggested that Stewart personifies the same attributes as the College’s namesake, making her the ideal person to lead a college that emphasizes writing, speaking and educational opportunity. And during a period of widespread retrenchment brought on by economic uncertainty, she has steered the College toward opportunities that have solidified Hamilton’s standing among the nation’s best liberal arts colleges. The 2010 need-blind decision was a bold move made even more dramatic coming in the wake of the Great Recession, and the investment of $63.8 million in new arts facilities at a time when American society has been focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education was a clear indication of Stewart’s successful advocacy for a broad-based liberal arts education.

The College, also observed two important anniversaries of its own during Stewart’s tenure: the bicentennial of the year Hamilton received its charter in 1812 and the golden anniversary of the 1965 charter establishing Kirkland College. Stewart used these occasions to reinforce ties between the two Hamiltons — Alexander and the College — while outlining a vision for the institution.

That vision has been endorsed by a devoted and discerning Board of Trustees and enacted by a senior staff whose members average 22 years of service to the College, a level of experience and expertise upon which Stewart has relied with great confidence. She routinely credits her senior colleagues for helping to produce the positive trajectory that has improved Hamilton’s already enviable standing among America’s most highly regarded liberal arts colleges.

Alumni have responded to Stewart’s vision, contributing more than $292 million for endowed scholarships, new and renovated facilities, academic programs and general operations during the first 12 years of her presidency. For many Hamilton alumni, the relationship with the president is personal. Stewart sends dozens of handwritten notes and letters every month, not to mention her connections with the thousands of alumni with whom she has interacted on campus and around the world. At the 12 commencements over which she has presided thus far, Stewart has presented diplomas to more than 5,700 graduates, representing approximately one-quarter of all living alumni.

A Hamilton education is a transformative education, but during the Stewart presidency, the College itself has been transformed with an impressive and highly functional physical plant, a renewed emphasis on access and affordability, and a growing confidence and stature — changes that have coincided with the restored reputation of the man for whom the institution is named.

— Mike Debraggio

Reflections

As a Leader

I was on the search committee when Joan Stewart was a candidate. After a few months, when we had not seen anyone whom we considered strong enough for the position, the chairman said, “We said we would have found a person by February and we must not fail.” And I said, “There is only one way we can fail and that is to choose the wrong president, a person who hasn’t the qualities the College needs. And so far we have not seen anyone about whom we, as a search committee, could say, ‘Wow, this is the person we want.’”

A short time later, we interviewed Joan and someone in the group said, “There’s wow!” and we all agreed.

In the beginning of her presidency, Joan encountered differences in the needs and desires and demands of the College’s many constituencies. She quickly learned that it is not possible to satisfy everyone. It often means the president has to recognize that it is a question of leadership and not popularity because a good leader is not necessarily going to be popular 100 percent of the time. Joan learned in her first years that she had to act in difficult situations according to the way she saw the issue, even if it was not the way some constituency or its members saw it. One cannot satisfy every constituency or every group, but one can gain — as Joan did — the respect of those with whom she disagreed.

The best presidents are not limited to academic ability. They have that, but that isn’t all they have. I think that every president who is a good president is also an entrepreneur. They see things that need to be done on campus that go beyond offering a strong academic program, and Joan has done that. If one visited the campus the year before she became president and this year, they would see that campus is transformed, and the merger with Kirkland is complete. The board, the faculty, the staff, the students and the alumni appreciate Joan Stewart. She is their leader and they will miss her.

— Elizabeth McCormack, life trustee of the College

As a Teacher

In the spring of 2005, after a senior dinner at the President’s House, Joan Stewart asked me if I might be interested in team-teaching a course in the 18th-century English and French novel with her. I was so excited about the prospect that I stayed up late that evening writing her a memo with some suggestions for the proposed course.

We were both conscious of how valuable it can be for students at a small residential college like Hamilton to have the experience of knowing the president as a classroom teacher. And it’s equally valuable for the president to have first-hand knowledge of students in the classroom environment. But we knew that President Stewart’s other responsibilities, particularly her travel schedule, would sometimes interfere with her ability to be present in class. For that reason, we organized the course as an upper-level seminar. Both she and I would be in the classroom for most meetings, but I would be present when she could not attend.

Joan and I read all of the students’ papers. I drafted a comment on each paper and sent it to her. Joan offered suggestions and changes, and the final comment and grade reflected both our views. The messages we exchanged as we shared opinions and worked out our judgments gave me an opportunity to appreciate the care with which she worked and her ability to know the students individually, as well as to admire her skill as an editor. I found her an ideal colleague with whom to collaborate.

Patsy Couper audited our seminar. When her 85th birthday fell on a day when the class met, Joan arranged for a cake and an in-class celebration. It gave us all a chance to show Patsy how much we loved having her as part of the group. Two students presented their papers on Dangerous Liaisons, and we had the ironic experience of enjoying birthday cake while discussing that tragic novel.

Twice during the time we taught the course, Joan invited trustees to read the assigned text and attend dinner and a meeting of the seminar. The texts were Letters of a Peruvian Woman (1747), in 2008, and Manon Lescaut (1731) in 2012. Both invitations led to lively and well-informed discussions of the novels and of the students’ critical papers and, we believed, to better acquaintance between the students and trustees.

Patsy later told us that she’d received a message from a student who said our seminar was the best course she took at Hamilton. It was one of my best teaching experiences, too.

— John O’Neill, the Edmund A. LeFevre Professor of English emeritus

As a Scholar

In the earliest days of the feminist movement, which prompted rediscovery of our literary foremothers, Joan Hinde Stewart was already studying them, publishing them and publishing about them. She has written extensively about 18th-century women novelists in particular — women whose works, once famous and respected, had been consigned to oblivion by literary historians or tucked away under the disparaging rubric of “the sentimental novel.” Her doctoral dissertation on Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni, published in 1976, was the first book-length study of that novelist in 50 years. Her subsequent 1979 critical edition of Lettres de Mistriss Fanni Butlerd made Riccoboni’s most successful novel available to scholars for the first time since 1836.

Joan’s landmark scholarship includes an essay from which I personally learned so much, “The Novelists and their Fictions,” published in 1984 in one of the first books on French women and the Enlightenment to come out of the feminist movement. She again broke ground in Gynographs: French Novels by Women of the Late Eighteenth Century (1993). It presents in all their rebellious glory the fiction of novelists such as Charrière, Riccoboni, Le Prince de Beaumont and Cottin, works whose so-called “feminine” themes of marriage, mothering and domesticity had caused them to be marginalized and diminished by literary historians. These studies are what the French would call incontournables; they remain the “go-to” studies in the field and no serious scholarship in this area fails to reference them.

Joan’s most recent book, The Enlightenment of Age: Women, Letters, and Growing Old in Eighteenth-Century France (2010), is a witty and graceful contribution to our understanding of how 18th-century French women of letters experienced aging. Joan shows how they refuted cultural stereotypes that cast older women simply as decrepit and sexless. Countering the notion of the laughable, unseemly vieille amoureuse [amorous old hag], they enjoyed in their later years not only a robust creative and intellectual life but also a healthy dose of “mature romantic love.” When I read her analysis of the oft-studied correspondence between the aging Riccoboni and Laclos, the much younger author of Les Liaisons dangereuses, I was so moved that I immediately wrote this to Joan: “I must tell you in the heat of enthusiasm how much I enjoyed reading your take on that epistolary duel, how enlightening I found it, how beautifully written your pages are. ... I so admire your ability to combine impeccable scholarship and good style.”

I don’t think my reaction is unique. Joan Stewart’s work is unpretentious yet incisive, foundational yet novel, solidly grounded in scholarship and wonderfully written. I’m looking forward to reading whatever will issue next from her pen.

— Vicki Mistacco, professor of French emerita, Wellesley College

On Access

I almost missed the opportunity to work for Joan Stewart. Hamilton was a dream job, to be sure, but I was plenty happy at my prior institution, and it was not yet obvious what type of leader Joan would be for Hamilton. In my interview, I remember asking her how she would measure success. When she responded with, “We’ll just have to figure that out together, Monica,” I knew I had found my president.

I now know that Joan had a very good sense of how she wanted to move Hamilton forward. While there have been so many accomplishments on so many fronts, perhaps none is as significant as the College’s commitment to access. All that Hamilton has achieved with regard to diversity — ethnic, geographic, socioeconomic, while also ratcheting forward every quality and selectivity measure — has everything to do with this president taking a leadership position on leveling the playing field for exceptional students who would not otherwise have the opportunity to attend Hamilton.

It has not all been easy, but Joan has cared more about Hamilton doing the right thing than the easy thing. It started with eliminating merit scholarships in favor of need-based financial aid, and then subsequently and boldly moving the College to our current need-blind admission policy. How the latter came to be is the stuff from which movies are made. During a brainstorming meeting with Hamilton’s board and the president’s staff, in the middle of the recession of 2009, individual trustees spontaneously pledged gifts totaling $3 million to cover the short-term cost of admitting and funding the most talented students, without considering their families’ ability to pay our fees. Meanwhile, Joan — with the help of many others — got busy initially raising $40 million to fund our need-blind promise for the longer term. When faced with a tough economy and a question about where we were going to spend our next dollar, Hamilton’s Board of Trustees and president chose our students.

Were it not for Joan Stewart’s unwavering commitment to ensuring — as she has said many times — that the privilege of a Hamilton education is not simply reserved for the privileged, none of this would be possible. The gift and promise of financial aid truly change lives, and during Joan Stewart’s tenure, we’ve gotten to change a whole lot of lives. So, returning to the question I asked Joan in my job interview, I can think of no better way to measure success for Hamilton … and for Joan Stewart.

— Monica Inzer, vice president and dean of admission and financial aid

As a Speaker

I once asked Joan Stewart during a Reunion Weekend how many talks she had to do; the number was somewhere around 20. It was something watching her run from one to another, speaking eloquently and without notes.

I have found that whether she is addressing alumni, describing campus issues to the board or welcoming a group of new parents, Joan communicates in a compelling and understandable manner about even the most complex issues. My most striking memory of Joan in action was a year ago in New York when she spoke to a room full of alumni and parents about Joan of Arc. I had certainly read a bit about the 15th-century French heroine and her exploits, but it was amazing to watch our Joan bring Joan of Arc to life in a manner that engaged and mesmerized the audience. By the end of the talk and subsequent discussion, we not only felt Joan of Arc had come alive to us, but we had a better appreciation of how great speaking and teaching enhance and truly are the essence of the liberal arts experience. As a college that prides itself on written and oral communication, Joan is a wonderful role model.

— Steve Sadove ’73 P’07,’10,’13, chairman of the Board of Trustees

As a Writer

Words matter to Joan Stewart. A lot.

I recall a time, immediately after she began her presidency, when Joan asked for feedback on a draft of remarks she had prepared. I was flattered — and a bit intimidated — but I soon came to learn collaboration would become commonplace during her tenure at Hamilton.

Back and forth we went on that piece of writing, rearranging sentences, adding and subtracting punctuation, eliminating unnecessary words. Always eliminating words. I came to appreciate fully that writing is truly a process, as Professor of English John O’Neill described it when we met years earlier to discuss the Nesbitt-Johnston Writing Center.

After multiple revisions over several days, we were finished. Or so I thought. I walked out of her office, but quickly returned to discuss a different matter. There she was, back in front of her computer, reworking another sentence.

The writing process never ends.

— Mike Debraggio P’07, assistant vice president for communications

As a Colleague

I met Joan Stewart about 13 years ago at a NESCAC meeting in Boston. We were both new presidents and these NESCAC meetings were a mystery to both of us. Two or three times a year the presidents of the NESCAC colleges get together to talk about athletic league matters and sometimes about the issues we face as college presidents at our various institutions. College presidents have this narrative that their jobs are very lonely, and only college presidents can understand the pressures we face. I immediately realized in first meeting Joan that she was a person I could learn a lot from. And, we both realized that although our jobs came with a great deal of responsibility, we were really fortunate to be leading amazing institutions.

As one might imagine there are a lot of egos in a room of college presidents, and air time is a commodity. In all of our group conversations over the years, Joan was the president who would listen very carefully to all of the views expressed, and at the precisely appropriate moment remind us why we were in the room and what should properly be our focus. Joan would always ask the right question. It was obvious in those meetings why Joan is such a fantastic and successful college president. She is powerfully bright, understands the academic world and has a large measure of common sense and straight talk.

I remember visiting Hamilton when the NESCAC had the tradition of holding one meeting a year on a member campus. I had been to Hamilton before, but this visit really opened my eyes to the beauty of the campus. I walked around meeting students, so many of whom talked to me about their awesome president. Joan was clearly leading the institution with strength and compassion for their experience.

Finally, it was very important to Hamilton that it become a “full member” of NESCAC. For many years Hamilton played some sports in the NESCAC while also participating in another athletic league. The discussion among the presidents on the issue was complex, largely because of the geographical dimensions of the league schools. In the end, Joan led us through why the issue mattered to Hamilton. It became clear to all the presidents that the right result was for Hamilton to be fully NESCAC, and we reached that conclusion in large part because of the advocacy that she provided and because of our respect and admiration for her as a president and colleague.

One of the great pleasures in leading a NESCAC college is getting to know as friends the presidents of the other schools. One day I was walking on the streets of Manhattan and I ran into Joan. We immediately stopped and broke into conversations as old friends do. Joan is a genuine talent, and Hamilton is so fortunate to have had her inspired compassionate leadership all these years.

— Barry Mills, president of Bowdoin College (2001-15)

As a Mentor

When I was a senior at Hamilton, I dressed up as Joan Hinde Stewart for Halloween. I assured everyone who asked that this was the sincerest form of flattery.

I got to know President Stewart through weekly meetings she held with me during my tenure as editor-in-chief of The Spectator. Our first meeting — I believe it was on a Monday morning — was nerve-racking; I was worried I would say something that would reflect poorly on either the newspaper or me. But she quickly put me at ease. I came to look forward to those meetings because she treated me as an equal and regarded me with compassion and respect.

I was (and still am) impressed by President Stewart’s uncanny sensitivity to the needs of individual students as they flow in and out of the school and, at the same time, her ability to retain a long-term plan for the institution as a whole. Many of my opinions about higher education and the liberal arts were formed while I was a student — both because I lived it and because she articulated what Hamilton stands for so eloquently and beautifully. To her, a Hamilton education meant the freedom to explore new ideas and discover what it means to be a citizen of the world and to lead a good life. I am forever grateful for that vision.

— Allison Eck ’12, digital associate producer, writer and reporter for NOVA, the PBS science documentary series, at WGBH Educational Foundation in Boston

As President

Without a doubt, I think that Joan Stewart is going to go down as one of the greatest presidents in Hamilton’s history.

I think it is fair to say that Joan benefited from coming to the Hill at a propitious time in the College’s history, but as a result of her strong leadership, she has changed my vision about what a successful president at Hamilton can be. She has connected with thousands and thousands of alumni who admire her greatly, even though she never had any prior association with Hamilton. She improved town-gown relations, raised millions of dollars for scholarships and strategically important facilities, dealt with some difficult issues in a deft fashion and moved the College forward at a very challenging time. One of the things I admire most about Joan is that she gives credit to the people who work with her. She is low-key, a good listener and a very good team builder who inspires the people around her to do their best. Joan dedicated these last 13 years to Hamilton’s betterment, and I don’t think you could ask more of any president.

— Jeff Little ’71, P’04, vice chairman of the Board of Trustees