Office of the President Kathleen McCartney files

Kathleen McCartney is the 11th president of Smith College. She was installed as Smith’s president on October 19, 2013. Born in Medford, Massachusetts, she was the first in her family to attend college. McCartney graduated summa cum laude from Tufts University and earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in psychology from Yale University. She came to Smith from the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she served as dean — only the fifth woman dean in Harvard's history — and the Gerald S. Lesser Professor in Early Childhood Development. Prior to teaching at Yale, McCartney was a tenured associate professor of psychology and family studies as well as director of the Child Study and Development Center at the University of New Hampshire. McCartney’s research has focused on early experience and development, particularly with respect to child care, early childhood education, and poverty. She has published more than 150 articles and book chapters on those topics and was the principal researcher for Child Care and Child Development, a 20-year study published in 2005 that examined whether early and extensive child care disrupted the mother-child relationship. She co-edited Experience and Development, The Blackwell Handbook of Early Childhood Development, and Best Practices in Developmental Research Methods.