Dartmouth Picks Sian Leah Beilock To Be Its Next President

Dartmouth College has selected Sian Leah Beilock to be its next president, succeeding Philip J. Hanlon, who will retire from the presidency at the end of the 2022-23 academic year.

Beilock is the current president of Barnard College. Prior to that post, she served as executive vice provost of the University of Chicago, where she also was the Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology. Beilock was previously an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Miami University, from 2003 to 2005.

Beilock, 46, will be the 19th president in Dartmouth’s history, when she assumes office on July 1, 2023. She will be the first woman to serve as president of Dartmouth.

“Sian is a leader with the aspirational vision to build our research enterprise, further our tradition of excellence in undergraduate education, and expand our global impact; she embraces the teacher-scholar model and brings experience from a world-class R1 institution as well as a distinctive liberal arts college,” said Elizabeth Cahill Lempres ’83, chair of Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees. “Sian’s election in this, our 50th year of coeducation at Dartmouth, was enthusiastic and unanimous. We are thrilled to welcome her to the Dartmouth family.”

“It is an immense honor to join Dartmouth, one of the nation’s most storied institutions of higher learning, and I am even more deeply moved by what lies ahead,” Beilock said. “I am grateful to the board of trustees for their confidence and to all those who have welcomed me so warmly during the search process and shared their profound dedication to the institution. It is clear to me that Dartmouth’s tight-knit learning community, together with world-class research and scholarship, is an enormously powerful vehicle for the creation of outstanding ideas with real impact.”

Among her accomplishments at Barnard, Beilock enhanced STEM research and teaching programs to parallel the college’s expertise in the arts and humanities. She implemented a campus-wide health and wellness initiative and increased diversity among students, faculty, and staff.

Beilock’s selection by the board of trustees followed a global search by an 18-member committee that included Dartmouth faculty, staff, students, alumni, and trustees.

“The Presidential Search Committee was proud to recommend Sian to the board as the next leader of Dartmouth,” said co-chair Susan Huang ’84. “The entire committee wholeheartedly agreed that she has all the strengths and experience needed to create an even more inclusive, vibrant student experience, and embed an innovative, agile mindset across Dartmouth.”

Beilock earned her bachelor’s degree in cognitive science from the University of California, San Diego, and PhDs in both kinesiology and psychology from Michigan State University. She is considered a leading expert on the brain science behind “choking under pressure” and the mental and physical factors that influence many types of performance, including test taking, public speaking and athletics.

Beilock’s research has focused on success in math and science for women and girls, and how performance anxiety can either be exacerbated or reduced by teachers, parents, and peers. She has published more than 100 papers and has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Education, and several foundations.

Beilock won the 2017 Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences. In addition, she is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Psychological Association, and a member of the National Academy of Kinesiology. Early in her career, she received awards from the Association for Psychological Science, American Psychological Foundation, the Psychonomic Society, and the Society of Experimental Psychologists.

Beilock is the author of two books that have been published in more than a dozen languages— Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal about Getting It Right When You Have To (2010) and How the Body Knows Its Mind: The Surprising Power of the Physical Environment to Influence How You Think and Feel (2015).

Her 2017 TED talk has been viewed more than 2.5 million times.