Dean of the College Gretchen Long and Provost Eiko Maruko Siniawer ’97 were both appointed to serve second terms in their roles, President Maud S. Mandel announced in an email to the College community on Jan. 29. Their new three-year terms will begin July 1.
“[Senior staff] not only help set policy and make executive decisions, but are important partners in envisioning how Williams can continue to provide the best possible education,” Mandel wrote in the email. “Gretchen and Eiko provide a valuable combination of faculty and administrative experience to those discussions.”
As dean of the College, Long manages a wide range of College programs such as Williams-Mystic, the Williams-Exeter Programme at Oxford, and Winter Study. She also works closely with the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and oversees the Ad Hoc Working Group on Academic Integrity, the Honor and Discipline Committee, and the JA Program Working Group, according to Mandel’s email. Long is also responsible for hiring new staff for the Office of Campus Life, the Office of Accessible Education, and the Chaplain’s Office, among others.
“I have liked learning about aspects of student life that remained a bit hidden from me when I was a faculty member,” Long wrote in an email to the Record. “My office also oversees the funds that help students travel to conferences, and I love reading about the work and research students do with their professors.”
Long named the installation of outdoor tables and colorful chairs around campus as one of her most memorable projects this term. “We received a gift to build community on campus and we used it to buy the outdoor tables and chairs,” Long wrote. “I like seeing people sitting in them, chatting, reading, or just watching the world go by.”
For her next term, Long said she hopes to continue to build community at the College. “I find that Williams students are quite eager to help each other and I’d like to make sure my [team] encourages and supports that impulse in Residential Life, Academic Support, [Center for Learning in Action] CLiA, etc.,” she wrote.
As provost, Siniawer is responsible for managing the allocation of the College’s $303 million annual budget to support priorities related to sustainability and financial services. She is also responsible for overseeing the funding of campus libraries, the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), and the Science Center, among other campus services. “True to my liberal arts background, I find it gratifying to deepen knowledge of, support, and engage in a broad range of work at the college, from financial management and planning to all of the provost areas,” Siniawer wrote in an email to the Record.
During her first term, Siniawer supported emissions reduction efforts on campus, helped coordinate the planning for the new location of WCMA, and worked with the offices of Admission and Financial Aid and Student Financial Services, as mentioned in Mandel’s email. She works closely with a range of campus groups, including the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility, the Ad Hoc Financial Planning Group, the Committee on Priorities and Resources, and the Working Group on the Future of the Williams-Mystic Program. In Mandel’s email, she also noted Siniawer’s efforts to increase financial transparency at the College by sharing reports from her office.
Siniawer wrote that she will prioritize maintaining the College’s financial health and commitment to its educational goals during her second term. “This includes preparing and planning for potential financial challenges, ranging from the impacts of tariffs and reductions in federal funds, to an increase in the endowment tax from the 1.4 percent that the college currently pays to a significantly higher rate,” she wrote.
