Katherine A. Rowe, President
Katherine A. Rowe, a nationally recognized leader in digital innovation of the liberal arts, became the 28th president of William & Mary on July 1, 2018.
Under her leadership, William & Mary has advanced a whole-institution approach to learning through a number of initiatives. These include a central Entrepreneurship Hub, a Studio for Teaching & Learning Innovation, W&M’s first long-range Sustainability Plan and a university-wide approach
to diversity and inclusion. William & Mary successfully closed its For the Bold campaign in June 2020, raising just over $1 billion.
During her first year, Rowe convened a series of conversations around the future of knowledge, work and service. These discussions shaped William & Mary’s strategic planning effort, currently underway. In the first phase of planning, the university community crafted William & Mary’s first-ever values statement.
Previously, Rowe served as provost and dean of faculty at Smith College in Massachusetts. Rowe led academic strategy and planning, overseeing all academic operations. During her tenure, Smith launched a design thinking curriculum, greatly increased diversity in faculty hiring and established one of the first statistical and data sciences majors at a liberal arts college (and the first at a women’s college). Rowe also served as Smith’s interim vice president for inclusion, diversity and equity.
Rowe is cofounder and former CEO of Luminary Digital Media, which developed a series of educational apps enhancing student engagement and learning of classic Shakespearean texts.
Rowe earned a bachelor’s degree in English and American literature from Carleton College and a master’s and a Ph.D. in English and American literature from Harvard. She has completed graduate work in cinema and media studies at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Rowe spent 16 years at Bryn Mawr College as an English professor, department chair and director of the Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center for leadership and public engagement. She was awarded the Rosalyn R. Schwartz Teaching Prize for Excellence and Innovation in 2011. Rowe also directed two collaborative programs with Haverford and Swarthmore, Tri-Co Digital Humanities and the Mellon Tri-College Faculty Forum. Before that, she was assistant professor of English at Yale.
Rowe has published three books, including most recently “New Wave Shakespeare on Screen” with Thomas Cartelli, and has editing credits in the “Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare.”
She serves on the Northern Virginia Technology Council and is a past president of the Shakespeare Association of America. She is also a past member of Harvard’s Board of Overseers’ Visiting Committee of the Library and the Executive Committee of the American Council of Learned Societies. In 2020, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education named Rowe one of the top 35 women in higher education.
An accomplished athlete, Rowe spent more than a decade coaching Ultimate Frisbee and has led multiple teams to state championships in Pennsylvania. She was a World Ultimate Club Finalist and a Women’s Nationals Finalist. She shares her passion for Ultimate with her husband, Bruce Jacobson, and two adult children, Daniel and Beah.
