Mary Hinton was selected as the 15th president of the College of Saint Benedict. Hinton, who currently serves as the vice president for academic affairs at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, NY, will take office on June 15, 2014. She succeeds MaryAnn Baenninger, who announced in October 2013 that she would step down in June 2014, after serving 10 years as president of the college.
The appointment was made after a unanimous vote by the College of Saint Benedict Board of Trustees and was announced by Lynn Newman, chair of the CSB Board of Trustees and a co-chair of the CSB Presidential Search Committee.
“The CSB Board of Trustees was impressed with Dr. Hinton’s breadth and depth of experience as a scholar and senior-level administrator in higher education,” Newman said. “Her commitment to residential, liberal arts education is evident, and her passion for the advancement of women and her belief in our Benedictine values align well with the CSB mission. We are confident that she will be an outstanding president of CSB.”
“I am humbled by the opportunity to lead an institution with such a powerful liberal arts tradition that is grounded in the Benedictine values of the founding order,” Hinton said. “CSB was built by strong and courageous women who knew the value of educating women and who celebrated and engaged both their intellectual and spiritual lives.”
“It is an honor to succeed Dr. Baenninger, who has brought CSB to a position of enormous strength,” Hinton said. “I feel fortunate to inherit not only the incredible foundation she has built during her tenure, but 100 years of excellence in women’s education.”
Hinton’s enthusiasm for leading CSB stems from her personal experience with liberal arts education as an undergraduate student at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. This, along with her professional experience on Catholic college campuses, has fueled her interest in integrating a spiritual perspective with a vibrant liberal arts education.
At Mount Saint Mary College, a Dominican college, Hinton provides senior administrative leadership for academic affairs, enrollment management, planning, assessment and institutional research and student affairs, among other areas. Hinton’s passion for student retention led to the development of the Center for Student Success, a model program that provides comprehensive academic support services to improve student retention and persistence. She has extensive strategic planning and institutional effectiveness experience and chairs the college’s Strategic Planning and Budgeting Committee.
Hinton’s work has been published in Inside Higher Education, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, Assessment Update and Religious Education. Recently, her scholarship was included in two books, “Religious Leadership” and “Teaching for a Culturally Diverse and Racially Just World” and her own book, “The Commercial Church: Black Churches and the New Religious Marketplace in America,” was published in 2011 by Lexington Books.
In addition to her extensive experience in higher education, Hinton’s career includes non-profit education organization management, philanthropic work in the corporate sector and work as a private elementary school teacher. She holds a Ph.D. in religion and religious education with high honors from Fordham University, a Master of Arts degree in clinical child psychology from the University of Kansas, Lawrence and a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Williams College.
