News
Interview with President Joan Hinde Stewart: Part 1 of 3
By Lucas Phillips '16
November 6, 2015
THE SPECTATOR: Tell me about some of your memories of your early education growing up.
JHS: I went to Catholic school for sixteen years. In fact, I went only to Catholic schools until I went to graduate school at Yale, and that was the first place, the first institution, that wasn’t run by the sisters of St. Joseph. So, that was a little different. There [pointing to a photo], there I am in third grade, St. Mary Mother of Jesus Elementary School, St. Brendan Diocesan High School, and St. Joseph’s College for Women. My earliest memory is having been the best-behaved girl in class. I was allowed to clean the erasers that are used on the chalkboard, and I remember going home and telling my mother that you go out into the yard [with them] and breathe in the chalkdust and nearly asphyxiate—going home and telling my mother that I was allowed to, and she was furious. You’re filthy, chalkdust all over you.
Did you have a favorite teacher from those years?
I had a couple of favorite teachers in college. In the early years I don’t remember a favorite—I pretty much liked them all. I liked school. I never, in high school, in my four years of high school, I never was late and I never missed a day, not once. And I think that was also true for several years in elementary school—probably, last few years of elementary school. I enjoyed it, liked school.
Let’s jump right to the end of high school. I wanted to ask you what it was like to be the first in your family to be entering the college process and how that went for you.
My family was very supportive, but in no way directive. This was new to them and their attitude was that if I wanted it, that that was great, and they would certainly do everything they could to support me. And they did. They were very good to me. I had three older siblings, two sisters and a brother. They were generous to me. My first desk, which was purchased when I was in high school, was purchased by my sister with her first paycheck when she went out to work. So, it was very, very good and moving. It’s moving to me; they were very generous. I lived at home. I commuted to school. I didn’t know there were colleges where people didn’t commute; no one had told me that. So, I applied to three colleges, all in Brooklyn, because I thought everyone lived at home and took the subway.
Let’s jump even farther ahead through your undergraduate and your graduate education. Talk about the process for you of going from a student to an educator and then finally to an administrator.
So, we’ll take the first link first. I think I knew all my life that I wanted to stay in school, that that’s what I wanted to do: I wanted to be a teacher. From as far back as I can remember I wanted to be a teacher. I would teach the dolls; I would teach the stuffed animals; my mother had to pretend that she was in my class. So, that was always a given. Becoming an administrator was in a way more interesting because unlike becoming a physician or a lawyer or an engineer or a fireman, for college administration, you don’t really take a course in how to do it. What have you done? You’ve studied Balzac and Shakespeare and Dickens, and you suddenly find that you’re running a department or a school of liberal arts or a college. And I think that my liberal arts education helped me to do that. I became assistant department head; that was my first administrative position in my first job at NC [North Carolina] State University.
Is there anything that you really missed about teaching as you took on more administrative roles?
Oh, everything. I loved being in the classroom. I loved being with students. I don’t particularly love grading papers, but apart from that, I miss the reading, the preparation, the thinking about, the way you were going to get your points over, the questions. I loved being in the classroom. I wouldn’t be here today if that hadn’t been something that propelled me all along.
Let’s talk about how you got here. So, tell me a bit about what the interview process was like. How did they find you? What particularly attracted you about coming here?
The College hired a search firm, a consultant, and the consultant called me and asked if I was interested in thinking about it. And I said yes. I remember the interviews—there were several interviews. And they took place in New York with large groups of—it was a large committee, I don’t know, between fifteen and twenty people, probably I’d say. I don’t remember the exact number: trustees, faculty, I think there was one student on the committee as I recall. And the more I heard about the College, the better I liked it. I remember visiting. I visited one day before it was announced that I was in negotiation with the College. It was kind of—not secret—but people didn’t really know who I was, and I went out. The interview took place over in Bristol and I went out and took a walk at some point. And I was blown away by how nice students were, by the people who stopped me and said, ‘Do you know where you’re going?’ You know, I’m geographically challenged: I can’t walk in a straight line and if I should turn right, I turn left. And people saw that immediately. And I remember going back to Bristol—this would be 13 or 14 years ago—and saying, ‘oh my gosh, students were just so nice and so kind and so eager to help a visitor on campus.’
What kinds of questions did they ask you?
In the interview?
Yes.
Oh, you know, they asked me the sorts of things I thought you would ask me. You know, what are you most proud of? What was your biggest success? What is your biggest failure? What do you think the future of the liberal arts is? How would you transition from a big southern university to a small private northeastern college because I had spent 27 years at NC State and then four years at University of South Carolina although previous to NC State...I’d been at Wellesley for a couple of years. So there were lots of questions like that. How do you define leadership? What do you know about the College? How do you get consensus around things?
Let’s jump into your first year here. What were some of the challenges you faced? I know that the president who came before you was very popular on campus. What was it like kind of in the wake of his departure?
Again, people were very warm and welcoming to me. There were few alumni, I would say, who were a little bit shocked at a woman president. But, you know, we talked to them and they seemed to come around, at least, I thought they did—I think they did. I guess one of the surprises for me was there was more deferred maintenance on campus than I expected. I probably said that to you. It’s such a beautiful campus and I didn’t know until I got here that we’d really have to think more about repair and renovation than I thought we would. But, there were not unpleasant surprises. It was a very good experience.
Could you tell me a bit more about what it was like being the first female president? Hamilton, of course, is traditionally very male-dominated. What was that experience like?
You know, it’s odd. I never thought of myself as a ‘woman president.’ And I still don’t. You asked me the question: obviously, I am, and it has to have inflected my experience. But it’s not the way I thought about myself. And I thought of myself as the president. And basically, most of the most part, that’s how people treated me.
What were some of the other challenges in that first year?
The winter. You know, I had been 31 years or more—32 years, maybe—in the Carolinas, where, when you go out in the morning, you kind of put your coat over your shoulders so you look nice. I was unused to putting my arms in the sleeves and putting on gloves. So, that was a challenge. And I would say, too, that although I had seen at the University of South Carolina, certainly, passionate alumni who were invested in the college. The passion of the Hamilton alumni was something extraordinary nonetheless. I mean, this is a very loyal body of alumni, and they really, really cared.
The last thing that we’ll end on is just talking about getting your wheels on the ground. So, how did you—what were your immediate goals and—how did you go about assembling your team?
I felt strongly, Lucas, that the job of a new president is not to come in with a pre-cooked vision or an agenda. And, indeed, Hamilton was in good shape. It didn’t need a pre-cooked agenda, but to evolve that with the people who are here, and so I took the time to do that. We entered into a strategic planning process. Not long after that, I talked to a lot of people all about it, what might be needed. And as far as the team goes, I was extraordinarily fortunate because there was a very good team in place. And many of the people I started with are still here. Mike [Debraggio] was already here, Dick Tantillo, Karen Leach, Dave Smallen, both Lori [Dennison] and Pat [Reynolds] were here, and Nancy [Thompson]—they were not in their current roles, but they were all here. So, I came into a strong team that got along very well together. So, I was lucky in that sense.