By Katie Goss ’23
Business Manager & News Editor
Photo of Amber Douglas, courtesy of Samara Douglas Rosenthal.
“The dean of the College position is, I think, a natural evolution of some of the success work that I’ve been doing and that my colleagues in Student Success and Advising have been doing over the last several years,” newly appointed Dean of the College Amber Douglas said.
Mount Holyoke announced that Douglas had been appointed dean of the College on Aug. 27. She will lead the Division of Student Success, which was originally called the Student Success and Advising department. This division includes the offices of Academic Deans, Fellowships and AccessAbility Services.
Douglas has worked at the College since 2005, where she first started teaching as an assistant professor of psychology and education before eventually becoming a tenured professor. In 2014, she became the faculty director of Student Success Initiatives, where she began working with College President Sonya Stephens, who was dean of faculty at the time.
When Stephens became acting College president in 2016, she created the Office of Student Success and Advising and asked Douglas to become its inaugural director. In 2017, Douglas took over the role of dean of studies. She has described her role as a faculty member as being “really focused on the student academic experience.”
The dean of the College is an “old title, but new role,” as Douglas described it. She plans to continue her work in student success at the College in this new role. She will be working closely with the Dean of Faculty, vice president of Academic Affairs, vice president for Student Life, vice president for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and the vice president for enrollment. Douglas not only wants to focus on academic success, but also the academic journey that students take, which includes other aspects of their life at the College, such as co-curricular activities.
To reach her goals, Douglas is focusing on supporting students’ exploration of the curriculum, academic integrity and academic support. One aspect of these aims is continuing the improvement of the school’s advising model.
“One of my biggest goals is to continue to hone our advising model and make sure that we really continue to land that in a way that reflects what students want [and] what faculty want,” Douglas said. “[We want] to make sure students feel supported from the moment they step onto our campus, as they’re graduating and beyond.”
In addition to these goals, Douglas also wants to focus on student retention, academic resilience and making sure students feel that being at Mount Holyoke is a valuable use of resources.
“College is a tremendous investment of not only students’ experiences, time and money, but also families, resources and energy,” Douglas said. “We want to make sure that feels like a valuable investment.”
In regard to academic resilience, Douglas mentioned that guiding students in figuring out what they do want, from experiences where they learned what they do not want, is important — even if it involves failure.
“That is a component of success, where I think in some ways it’s a little bit scarier to think about how failure fits into that. But, I think it’s an important part,” Douglas said.
According to Douglas, being in this new role will allow her and her colleagues to advocate for students, as they are in a stronger position to do so.