Chancellor Cantor: Syracuse's First Woman Chancellor

This past fall, Sarah Lawrence trustee Nancy Cantor ’74 was appointed chancellor and president of Syracuse University, the first woman to hold the post.

As a Sarah Lawrence undergraduate, Cantor studied practically everything: math, anthropology, psychology, literature, visual arts. The breadth of this coursework, she says, “taught me to appreciate the diversity of cultural expression, the many different kinds of intelligence, and the value of crossdisciplinary efforts”—key to her work as a college administrator and psychologist.

During her senior year, Cantor did an independent study in experimental psychology that convinced her to pursue a career in the field. She earned her Ph.D. from Stanford and went on to become a distinguished scholar of social and personality psychology, publishing some 90 book chapters and journal articles, advising the National Science Foundation and receiving several awards from the American Psychological Association for her contributions to the field.

As a professor, Cantor served on committees that eventually led her into college administration. She served as department chair at Princeton; dean, provost and executive vice president at the University of Michigan and chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before accepting the Syracuse position.

—S.W.