Bell will end her tenure as both Provost and Dean of the Faculty at Barnard in 2024, but will remain a part of the College’s faculty as a researcher and will resume teaching after a sabbatical.

After 11 years as Barnard’s Provost and Dean of the Faculty, Linda Bell will step down from her administrative roles next year, according to an announcement from Barnard President Laura Rosenbury on Monday evening. Bell, who also holds the title of Claire Tow Professor of Economics, plans to remain a part of Barnard’s faculty, where Rosenbury says she will “resume her award-winning research as an economist and, after a well-earned sabbatical, will also teach.” The full text of Rosenbury’s announcement can be found below. 

Bell joined Barnard’s faculty in 2012 after serving as Provost at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. An accomplished economist and academic, Bell previously held visiting faculty appointments at Princeton, Harvard, and Stanford. She has also served as a consultant to the World Bank and the U.S. Department of Labor, and as a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, among other appointments. As an academic, she spent several years as an active member of the American Association of University Professors, first as chair of the Committee on Faculty Compensation and later as a national council representative. Her research, which focuses largely on the gendered issues in the American corporate economy, has been published in the Journal of Labor Economics, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, and the Federal Reserve Bank Quarterly Review, among many others. Bell received a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1981, and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1986. 

During her 11 years as Barnard’s Provost, Bell led a number of major academic initiatives, including the development of Barnard’s Foundations—the College’s current core curriculum—as well as the creation of the Summer Research Institute (SRI) and the Accelerated 4+1 Pathways Programs. SRI provides funding, subsidized campus housing, and faculty support to STEM students conducting research during the summer, and the 4+1 programs allow Barnard students to spend five years completing dual Bachelors and Masters degrees in partnership with one of a variety of Columbia graduate programs. 

Bell also played a major role in facilitating the development of several academic departments at Barnard, including Africana Studies, American Studies, Computer Science, Cognitive Science, and Neuroscience. As part of her role in the planning of the Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning, Bell was also responsible for developing a number of Barnard’s academic centers, including the Digital Humanities Center, the Movement Lab, the Design Center, the Sloate Media Center, the Vagelos Computational Science Center, and the Center for Engaged Pedagogy (CEP).

Under Bell’s leadership, in Fall 2020, Barnard piloted the controversial “Big Problems: Making Sense of 2020,” a semester-long required course for first-year students. The course was intended to—as then-president Sian Beilock wrote in an email announcing its formation—guide students to “think critically about how COVID-19 and our country’s historical injustices have generated social, economic, political, and ecological upheavals.” However, it quickly became the subject of community pushback, including a college-wide boycott led by a coalition of BIPOC first-year student organizers. In December 2020, the organizers of the boycott published an open letter, signed by over 100 first-year students and addressed to Barnard administration. The letter outlined the group’s issues with the course’s design and execution and urged the College to drop Big Problems in favor of “implementing real change within the Barnard curriculum.” Among other factors, the authors took particular issue with the course’s structure, writing, “the fact that ‘Big Problems’ is a one-semester, single credit, pass/fail course that packs centuries of history, struggle, and pain into a once-a-week, hour-long class taught by upperclassmen, with minimal anti-racist training, demonstrates that Barnard ostensibly believes racism is an issue that only deserves to be discussed for one semester and without depth and intention.” Bell and leadership from the Center for Engaged Pedagogy later met privately with student organizers to discuss the course further.

Reflecting on the course in April 2021, Bell wrote to students, “the intention of Big Problems was to impel an awareness and exploration of the most challenging issues facing our society—the movement for racial justice, the pandemic, and their intersections. Despite our best intentions to collectively examine these issues, student evaluations and input make clear that although many students found the lectures and topic focus beneficial, many also saw the course as either “performative” or insufficiently supported by the College, or both.” Big Problems was later temporarily removed from Barnard’s catalog ahead of the 2021-22 academic year, and has not been offered since.

According to President Rosenbury’s announcement, the College will soon begin a nationwide search for the next Provost and Dean of the Faculty, under the council of a faculty-led search committee. Rosenbury’s email encouraged interested faculty, staff, and students to nominate themselves and/or colleagues to join the search committee, and said committee members will be announced in October. 

Email from Barnard College President Laura Rosenbury to Students on Monday, September 11, at 5:18 pm: 

Dear Members of the Barnard Community,

After 11 years of extraordinary service as Provost and Dean of the Faculty, Linda Bell has decided to step down from her administrative role when her current contract concludes at the end of the 2023-2024 academic year. Linda will remain at Barnard to resume her award-winning research as an economist and, after a well-earned sabbatical, will also teach as a member of the Barnard faculty.

When Linda steps down at the end of the academic year, her years of service will be three times the median term for provosts nationwide. Linda has contributed so much to the Barnard community as our Provost, and she has been a wonderful partner these past three months as I have joined the Barnard community. I look forward to continuing to work closely with Linda this year and to celebrating her many accomplishments, which are too numerous to describe in just one email. I will emphasize some highlights for now, and we will celebrate all of Linda’s significant successes throughout the year.

Following a competitive national search, Linda joined Barnard in 2012 from Haverford College in Pennsylvania, where she served as Provost and the John B. Hurford Professor of Economics. Linda quickly became a champion for Barnard’s faculty and for the integrity and excellence of our academic programs, building on the College’s strong academic foundation by supporting faculty research and nurturing and growing an environment where scholarship and teaching thrive. Among other things, Linda:

• Led the charge to establish the Barnard Summer Research Institute (SRI) in 2014, which has since provided summer funding, subsidized campus housing, and supportive programming for over 1,300 students conducting STEM research under the guidance of faculty mentors and researchers from Barnard and throughout New York City.
• Inaugurated the Accelerated 4+1 Pathways Programs for graduate study in collaboration with Columbia, featuring new partnerships with the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) in Chemical, Biomedical, Civil, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering; Computer Science; and Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, and with the Mailman School of Public Health with distinct Humanities, Social Science, and Natural Science tracks.
• Oversaw the development and implementation of Barnard’s Foundations curriculum, which replaced the Nine Ways of Knowing in 2016 and added depth, breadth, and flexibility to our students’ courses of study.
• Collaborated with faculty members in multiple disciplines to facilitate the establishment of five new academic departments and programs: Africana Studies, American Studies, Computer Science, Cognitive Science, and Neuroscience.
• Established six new academic centers at Barnard: the Digital Humanities Center, our Movement Lab, the Design Center, our Sloate Media Center, the Vagelos Computational Science Center, and the Center for Engaged Pedagogy (CEP).
• Worked tirelessly with the CEP, Barnard faculty, and Columbia to ensure a robust and innovative response to the challenges of the pandemic, including introducing innovative new course offerings, new modalities of teaching, and strong support programs for ensuring effective pedagogy despite the challenges of remote learning.
• Led the academic planning components of the Cheryl & Philip Milstein Center for Teaching & Learning, ensured Barnard’s successful re-accreditation by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education in 2022, and has helped lead our current planning for the Roy and Diana Vagelos Science Center.

Linda’s devotion to the Barnard community has been strikingly apparent during all of these endeavors and throughout her many efforts to strengthen our academic excellence. I know we are all grateful for what Linda has accomplished as Provost and for all that she will continue to accomplish over the course of this new academic year.

We will soon begin a nationwide search for our next Provost and Dean of the Faculty, and I will constitute a faculty-led committee to conduct the search. My goal is to compose a diverse committee whose members bring broad perspectives and experiences and a deep appreciation for Barnard to this important task.  

I welcome nominations of faculty, staff, and students to serve on the committee. If you are interested in serving on the committee or wish to submit a nomination of a colleague, please submit your nomination here by September 25. I will announce and charge the committee by the beginning of October. Spencer Stuart, a national search firm, will support the committee throughout the process.

We will have time later in the academic year to celebrate Linda and all her varied contributions to Barnard. For now, please join me in congratulating Linda for her many years of collaborative leadership and extraordinary service. She has been a truly remarkable Provost and Dean of the Faculty.

Very truly yours,

Laura Rosenbury

President

Linda Bell portrait via Barnard College