Photo by D. Trumpie

Posted Friday, February 23, 2007

For more photos and coverage of the announcement celebration, view also Hailing the New Chief: Donna Randall Named Albion College's 15th President.

ALBION, Mich. – Albion College today (Friday, Feb. 23) announced the appointment of its 15th president, Dr. Donna M. Randall, currently the provost at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. Randall is the first woman president in the college’s 172-year history. She succeeds Dr. Peter T. Mitchell, who is retiring in June after 10 years in the Albion presidency. Randall’s appointment will be effective July 1, 2007.

The appointment, affirmed this morning by the Albion College Board of Trustees, concludes a national search that has been conducted since August and involved trustee, faculty, staff and student representatives.

“Donna Randall will bring extraordinary leadership abilities to her role as Albion’s president,” said Richard Baird, chairman of the College’s Board of Trustees. “She is a seasoned academic administrator and a talented scholar-teacher, with profound insights on how our nation’s colleges—and Albion, in particular—can and should prepare students for global citizenship in the 21st century. In addition, she will bring an open and collaborative approach to her work as president that will encompass not only the campus community but alumni and members of the greater Albion community as well. In Donna Randall, I believe we will have a creative and courageous leader who will build on our traditional strengths and help shape a vibrant future for Albion College.”

Randall has served since 2000 as provost at the University of Hartford, an independent, coeducational institution with approximately 7,200 undergraduate and graduate students. In that role, she has provided leadership for the university’s seven colleges and schools, as well as international programs, the honors program, and admissions and financial aid. She has chaired a number of strategic planning initiatives at the university, and has helped secure funds for the honors program and instructional technology. A board member for the university’s Mortensen Library and Hartford Art School, Randall has also been active regionally, serving as chair of evaluation teams for the New England Association of Schools & Colleges.

“I am excited about the opportunity to provide leadership for a college with such a distinguished and long history of providing students with an exceptional liberal arts education,” Randall said. “Many graduates of Albion have assumed positions of prominence in both the private and public sectors. I look forward to raising the national visibility of an institution that is not only educating students to be citizens in a rapidly changing world, but also preparing them to be leaders who initiate that change.”

Prior to joining the University of Hartford, Randall served as dean and professor of management at the Fogelman College of Business and Economics at the University of Memphis (Tenn.) from 1995 to 1999 and then was interim senior vice provost for academic affairs in 1999-2000. While at Memphis she participated in fundraising initiatives supporting faculty development and advancements in information technology, including attracting seed funding for a $23-million FedEx Institute of Technology. She served on the boards of Junior Achievement of Memphis and Goals for Memphis. She was also involved nationally in the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International).

From 1984 to 1995 Randall was on the faculty of the Department of Management and Systems at Washington State University in Pullman, Wash., serving as department chair from 1992 to 1995. During that time, she also spent a year as a visiting professor at University College-Dublin in Dublin, Ireland. An accomplished scholar, she has written extensively about ethical decision-making in the professions and is a past editorial board member of the Journal of Business Ethics. Her other research interests include workplace safety issues and employee rights, organizational behavior, and work motivation.

A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Randall holds a B.A. in sociology from Drake University, M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from Washington State University, and an M.B.A., also from Washington State. She participated in the Institute for Educational Management for Senior Executive Leadership at Harvard University.

She is married to Dr. Paul R. Hagner, an educational technology consultant, and they have a daughter, Kate, who is currently a first-year student at Suffolk University in Boston studying psychology and creative writing. They will relocate to Albion at the end of June.

“When my husband and I visited the Albion area and we were greeted with such warmth and openness,” Randall said, “we knew that this was a community that we wanted to be part of.”

A national and regional leader in academics, information technology, the arts and athletics, Albion College is committed to the theme of “Liberal Arts at Work.” Located in Albion, Mich., it has an enrollment of 1,950 students. Albion is listed among the Top 100 national liberal arts colleges in the “America’s Best Colleges” guide, published by U.S. News & World Report.

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