Joanne Berger-Sweeney—Neuroscientist And President Of Trinity College—On Moving Education Forward

College campuses have always been flashpoints in the culture wars, whether you’re talking about the radicalism of the abolition movement, the social upheaval of the sixties, or the modern kulturkampf happening around us day after day. And that’s something that makes a great deal of sense; college campuses are where many of our future leaders are educated, form adult identities, and form adult values. It is not by any stretch of the imagination surprising how a college education tends to make someone more open to new ideas than they might otherwise be; the modern university is more often than not the first place someone really encounters people from outside their own experience in a large, comprehensive way. 

Today, as the United States strains at its constitutional bonds over everything from gender to women’s rights to a long-overdue reckoning with its sin of slavery and racial bigotry, our campuses seethe in a zero-sum game with no clear outcome or even victory conditions. More young women than ever are college educated, but the market for their labor has contracted as a result of the same pandemic that has claimed countless lives over the last year and a half and dramatically upended the entire educational system.

With all of those issues in mind, this author was lucky enough to sit down, virtually speaking, with Joanne Berger-Sweeney, the first woman and the first Black American to serve as president of Trinity College in Connecticut (which also happens to be your author’s alma mater) to discuss both her career and the changing educational landscape in these crisis years.

Liz Elting: As a Trinity College alum, one who is acutely aware of the fact that my alma mater only began admitting women in 1969, I want to say how delighted it makes me to see a woman ascend so high there. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Joanne Berger-Sweeney: As a teenager growing up in Los Angeles, California, I knew I wanted to be a scientist. I had the opportunity to attend some of the best institutions of learning around the world and be mentored by some of the world’s brightest and best people. My career as an educator/scientist took me far, to places I couldn’t imagine. I entered academic administration because I thought I could significantly impact education and influence more people in my administration roles than as a scientist/educator. Now, I am the president of one of the most prestigious colleges in the country, and my job is to empower others and help make their educational dreams come true in science and other fields. But I still feel like that little girl who is a scientist at heart. I have approached my administrative career as a scientist: creating theories and experimenting, gathering, and analyzing data, and revising practices based on findings.

Elting: What would you consider the crowning achievement of your career?

Berger-Sweeney: During my seven years at Trinity, my crowning achievement has been to significantly improve access to and quality of the Trinity student experience. Since I arrived at Trinity, we have nearly doubled the amount of financial aid to incoming students, providing access to a greater number of students across the socioeconomic spectrum. We were able to choose the best students, not simply the students who could best afford a Trinity College education; the academic quality of our students and student diversity have also increased dramatically. At the same time, we have improved the quality of the students’ experiences, introducing better and more diverse experiences inside and outside the classroom, leading to significantly increased first to second-year student retention, student satisfaction, and post-graduation career outcomes. And we have done all of this while maintaining a balanced operating budget, addressing deferred maintenance needs, and strengthening the college’s overall financial position.

Elting: How did you transition from faculty to administration, and how was that experience?

Berger-Sweeney: Before my role at Trinity, I served as the dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University and an associate dean of the faculty at Wellesley College. In total, I’ve been in administrative roles for more than 15 years. Remembering back, it was a challenge transitioning from the faculty to administration, but one that I welcomed. In higher education, there is much more skepticism regarding administrators’ roles than faculty members’ roles. For years, other faculty members that I had known considered my transition to administration as going “to the dark side.” It wasn’t easy. I have great respect for the work done in the classroom and greatly appreciate the need for the work done outside of it to create an atmosphere where students, faculty, and staff can thrive together. In an administration position, I’ve been able to have a more significant impact and greater influence to help shift resources to support our mission to educate bold, independent thinkers who lead transformative lives and support our institutional priorities. As I previously mentioned, I have greatly improved access and experiences for thousands of students.

Additionally, this year at Trinity College, we significantly improved faculty diversity through a Special Opportunity Hiring (SOH) initiative. That is the kind of broader and deeper impact that I have as an administrator; there are great rewards, indeed, of doing administration. The transition from the faculty, though challenging, has been worth it.

Elting: Who would you consider your greatest inspiration and why?

Berger-Sweeney: My mother. She was truly inspirational. She was college-educated through a master’s degree, which was relatively rare for African American women at that time, and she encouraged her children to strive for higher education as a pathway to success. She was one of the first African American women to serve as an executive of the Girl Scouts of America organization in a major metropolitan area. While balancing her career, my mother still found time to be a hands-on parent to three children. She believed that her children could do anything they wanted to do, and she empowered us to do so. I like to think I inherited some of her courage, confidence, humility, and the innovation that made her a leader in our community and characteristics that made her a wonderful, loving mother.

Elting: To some larger questions. As a neuroscientist, you’ve experienced firsthand the hard path women in STEM have to tread. There’s been a lot of talk over the last several years about making sure girls as young as elementary-school age have STEM careers communicated to them as real possibilities, but less so the question of how to support women once they’ve begun their studies. I think often of the difficult position women are placed into by the assumptions of a simple office setting, and STEM subjects, which necessarily carry with them whole rafts of assumptions about what women are and are not “suited” for, can look like minefields. What support do these ambitious and intelligent young women need that they aren’t getting at most universities?

Berger-Sweeney: I think a more holistic and inclusive approach to STEM throughout the education process is needed. We need to create an environment that begins with understanding that all students can succeed in science. So often, we teach STEM fields competitively. Only the highest-scoring students are perceived as the smartest and capable of moving forward in STEM. We should approach STEM education collaboratively rather than through a competitive funnel where only those perceived as the best and brightest from a young age can enter. Overly competitive environments where students aren’t learning collaboratively and cooperatively disadvantage girls, women, and even some boys. There is often a perception that underrepresented groups and women cannot “compete” in STEM fields. Historically, STEM fields have been predominated by highly competitive white males; that’s not right! We are missing out on a lot of STEM talent with our current, more competitively oriented approaches to science education. This approach can be exclusive and psychologically damaging. There needs to be inclusive conversations and work that helps uplift girls and women and underrepresented minorities interested in STEM careers.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are more successful and disproportionately train more Black scientists than white institutions. One of their keys to success is creating a supportive, collaborative educational atmosphere that isn’t focused on weeding out individuals. There are lessons to be learned if we are willing to listen. 

Elting: The pandemic has, of course, wildly complicated matters further, making it more difficult for students of any stripe to build community and confidence in their studies. And just when it looked like September would be safe, we’re at the very beginnings of what may turn into another COVID tsunami that could further disrupt the education of an entire generation. Young women especially, who have already labored under heavier expectations to meet higher standards, may now find themselves in academic environments they are far less equipped to thrive in and with fewer avenues for support. We’ve already seen how the pandemic has foisted additional burdens on working women, forcing millions from the workforce. How can we prevent that from happening in academia?

Berger-Sweeney: We must understand that individual and shared experiences throughout the pandemic have been enormously challenging and often isolating. It has taken a toll on our sense of community and shared humanity for each other. If we can offer opportunities to help recreate a sense of community, it will help recreate a sense of belonging. We have to be open to renewing a thriving learning and social environment at our higher education institutions. At Trinity, we offered a series of activities as part of our efforts to restore the vitality of our community post-pandemic, including community picnics, our annual Summer Carillon Concert Series, and more.

Additionally, we provided small grants to members of our community to propose and plan fall events/activities that allow people to get together across constituent groups (students, faculty, and staff) for community building. We want everyone to have opportunities to re-engage socially and renew our sense of common purpose. Finally, we also will be mindful of the need for increased flexibility to engage fully a workforce that longs for balance and some flexibility in their lives. 

Elting: This is a historical moment where we’re confronting as a society our history with racial bigotry, misogyny and sexual discrimination, homophobia and transphobia, and on and on and on. As always seems to happen during these tumultuous periods, our campuses have turned into cultural flashpoints. Two questions. First, out of sheer curiosity, how has the pandemic affected that? And second, how is Trinity responding to these titanic cultural currents?

Berger-Sweeney: College campuses have long been places where change begins, influencing change nationally and globally. For many people, there will never be a more diverse group of people that you’ll interact with than when you’re in college. Campuses have also been a marketplace of ideas, where we’re testing the boundaries in our democratic society. Therefore, it’s no surprise that hard conversations happen on our campuses (and often with exuberance and robustness) in a country exhibiting deep divides and sharp contrasts. 

Of course, Trinity’s campus, like many college campuses, had to take an honest look at ourselves and our history. We had to engage in difficult and uneasy conversations about racism, homophobia, gender- and other biased practices. However, that’s when we can do our best work—when we allow ourselves the chance to have rich, fulsome, healthy dialogue and debate with one another. When we challenge each other with respect, we define more clearly our boundaries and values. I am deeply proud to be a part of this deep learning and debate that is so characteristic of a college setting.

At Trinity, we responded to matters of social injustice, and we delved deep. We worked with student leaders, faculty, staff, and administrators on a campus climate task force under the guidance of our VP for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and me as co-chairs. We identified priorities to improve our campus climate. We developed The Primus Project, which is probing Trinity’s past around the time of its founding to tell a more thorough history and inform how we work toward a more just and inclusive present and future. The project is funded, in part, by the Luce Foundation Director’s Grant. As previously mentioned, we created guidelines for Special Opportunity Hires and committed to six such hires each year for the next three years to increase faculty diversity by more than ten percent. These are only a few initiatives designed to reinforce our responsibility to hire a more diverse faculty representing a broad spectrum of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds and life experiences. We have formed a new trustee committee on diversity, equity, and inclusion, to show our commitment to these values from the very top of the organization. With strong support from our trustees and alumni, higher education can and must take the lead in studying and addressing systemic racism and inequity in the United States.

Elting: Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Berger-Sweeney: Thank you for this opportunity to share a little about myself, my values and priorities, and more about this wonderful institution Trinity College, which I have the privilege of leading. We are honored to have you as a committed and engaged trustee of the institution. 

The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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This contributor is a graduate of Trinity College.