After two years at Haverford College, Interim President Joanne Creighton said her official goodbye late last month. We reached Creighton over the phone for an interview on May 20.
Where are you headed next?
I’m going back to Amherst, Massachusetts with my husband and dog. And I am resuming a 5-college professorship for three years. I abandoned that [position] twice so now I’m actually going to do it. I’m still tenured at Mount Holyoke. For 3 years I have a rotating professorship among the five colleges to teach, starting at UMASS, a class for English majors following [William Faulkner] and other writers who follow him and his traditions.
What kind of challenges were you looking at when you first came to Haverford?
When I first arrived right before the term began, there was quite a feeling of disconnection or polarization to some degree among various groups and concern about where the institution was going. I think that my major task and accomplishment was to pull everybody back together. And I used the theme of recentering to rally around the central mission of the institution, and [clarify] shared goals and objectives.