President’s Office
Nancy J. Cable, Interim President
By unanimous vote of the Board of Trustees, Nancy J. Cable was appointed interim president of Bates College on July 1, 2011. Bates has begun the search for its next president, with a goal of announcing an appointment by July 1, 2012.
Cable succeeds Elaine Tuttle Hansen, who served as the seventh president of Bates for nine years before becoming executive director of the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University on Aug. 1, 2011.
Cable joined Bates in 2010 as vice president and dean of enrollment and external affairs, with responsibility for strategic enhancement in admission, financial aid, career development, and college communications, marketing and positioning. She will retain that role while serving as interim president and plans to return to these leadership responsibilities at the conclusion of her interim presidency in July 2012.
In announcing Cable’s appointment last spring, Michael Bonney ’80, chairman of the Bates Board of Trustees, said, “Given Nancy’s senior leadership experience in exceptional colleges and universities, coupled with her deep commitment to the academic mission of the college and clear support for the work of our faculty and staff, the board voted unanimously to appoint her as president and, in doing so, the trustees have expressed their complete confidence in Nancy’s leadership capabilities. We know that our Bates community will benefit from her experience, her skills and energy, and her willingness to serve the college as president during this transition.”
Cable has built a national reputation in higher education, compiling a distinguished record of senior leadership at highly regarded colleges and universities and in various national higher education organizations. She has also served as a faculty member, teaching courses on the history of American higher education and on American intellectual property at Denison University and Guilford College.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree from Marietta College (where she majored in history and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa) and a master’s degree in higher education administration from the University of Vermont, she joined Denison University in 1977 as assistant dean of students, becoming associate dean of students before leaving Denison in 1980 to complete a doctorate in educational history at the University of Virginia.
She subsequently returned to Denison in 1983 as director of the career development center and graduate school advising. She was also the founder of and faculty adviser to the Denison University Global Studies Center, a center for international and American students at Denison to discuss global issues and multicultural values. She held a faculty position there as adjunct assistant professor of history.
In 1987 she joined Guilford College as vice president for student development and dean of students. As a member of the senior staff, she was responsible for management of admission and enrollment, athletics and student development programs; and served on an array of central planning committees for the college. She also served as an adjunct assistant professor of history.
In 1992 she became vice president and dean of admission and financial aid at Davidson College, a position she held until 2005. At Davidson she led a college-wide effort to advance selectivity, diversity and faculty involvement in the admission and financial aid process, and provided a tangible link between student recruitment and fundraising through the inauguration of several nationally recognized scholarship programs.
During her tenure in this position applications to Davidson increased by 86 percent, selectivity increased significantly and the number of students from underrepresented groups doubled. She served as a member of the president’s cabinet and played a key role in major gift solicitation during two successful capital campaigns.
Cable joined the University of Virginia in 2005 in two vice presidential capacities, serving as vice president for development and associate dean for institutional advancement for the School of Engineering and Applied Science; and as vice president for development and alumni affairs for the Institute for Shipboard Education and Semester-at-Sea, for which UVa is the academic sponsor. During her tenure, the School of Engineering and Applied Science experienced an increase of 12 percent in gifts to its annual fund, as well as increased applications and a higher number of African American and women students. For the Institute for Shipboard Education, Cable inaugurated the Semester at Sea Leadership Forum on Global Affairs, the Desmond Tutu Chair in Global Understanding and the C.Y. Tung Program in Sino-U.S. Relations.
In 1998, Change magazine and the Chronicle of Higher Education named her one of 40 national “Young Leaders in Higher Education.”
Cable has served in a wide variety of capacities with professional associations, including as a member of the National Merit Scholarship Corporation’s selection committee; as an invited member of a national admission study group convened by the College Board, and a presenter at conferences sponsored by the College Board and by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). She has also given presentations at numerous other conferences of college and university admission officers and leaders.
She has also served as a member of the board of trustees of Marietta College, the Asheville School, the Cannon School and the Greensboro, North Carolina chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, where she provided philanthropic support for the Board’s work in developing the Anytown USA program for young-adult understanding of human diversity.