Sisterhood Spotlight

What led to your decision to become an educator?

I’m someone who believes in playing the long game. That’s one of the things that attracted me most to William & Mary. You cannot thrive for three-plus centuries without innovation and creativity. To play the long game, you have to bring the next generation with you. Education does that. The best part of my job, as a teacher and now as a president, is supporting young adults to strive for something difficult together and succeed.

What to you is an exciting opportunity in education right now?

Over the last two years, higher education has shown that our industry can adapt much more quickly and efficiently than anyone imagined. We find ourselves at a moment where we can use that newfound strength to continue to adapt – strategically, by choice – in the ways that are going to matter most for our mission. In 2022, William & Mary launched a strategic plan, Vision 2026. For a world-class university, our fundamentals drive our vision. Student success is grounded in a great experience on campus. Students need to learn in transformative ways: ways relevant to their lives as citizens and professionals in a pluralistic democracy, where freedom of expression enables the open exchange of ideas that fuel positive change. And they need to land jobs. That means landing their first job as well as those that will follow, throughout rapidly evolving careers. The high quality of our arts and sciences and professional programs at William & Mary is more important than ever.

What would you say to young women who are considering entering your field?

Cross-train. If there is one thing I have learned throughout my career, it is that fully inhabiting the different aspects of our identities makes us more agile and effective as leaders, and better prepares us to lead through change. I have cross-trained in so many different roles: classroom teacher and scholar; entrepreneur; competitive athlete and coach; academic leader; CEO; mom. Every one of those roles strengthens the other. My second piece of advice, to quote women’s rights and civil rights icon Mary Church Terrell: “Lift as you climb.”

What is a challenge you’re currently facing?

Mental health will continue to be a major challenge nationally for higher education. That’s true, too, for every business and community. The American Psychological Association reports that anxiety and depression in every age group are four times higher than before COVID. And they tell us we’re going to see the impact of this for seven to 10 years. When it comes to young adults, universities have a critical role that we did not have 10, 20, or 50 years ago. We have an opportunity to teach our graduates how to differentiate between healthy stress and unhealthy stress; to define excellence in their own terms; to cultivate grit; to reduce stigma around mental health issues in a way that allows us each to draw on our community and gain resilience. William & Mary’s McLeod Tyler Wellness Center has become a nationwide model for wellness by cultivating these capacities for our graduates.

What’s a piece of advice that has impacted the trajectory of your career?

Be curious. Our “new normal” requires being ready to adapt in a way that sustains what we value most as professionals, as organizations, as communities. That’s a counter-intuitive idea: that we change in order to advance what we value. Our experiences with the pandemic proved its truth.

Tell us one thing you’d like people to know about the school you serve.

At William & Mary, we have a freshman class that concludes the semester with a fun assignment: come up with a slogan to recruit next year’s entering class. The year I arrived at W&M, they welcomed me with, “Join the tradition. Make history.” Pretty inspiring. Last spring’s class summed up their experience with, “William & Mary: Unprecedented, As Usual.” I love that way of thinking about old and new together. W&M is building on 330 years of innovation. Our graduates have an entrepreneurial mindset. They are the rising generation of professionals and citizens we need, who will ensure our Commonwealth and our democratic republic flourish for all times coming.

What is a lesson you learned from your Shakespearean studies that you use in your day to day?

Shakespeare wrote during a period of very rapid change: technology change, economic change, political change. That’s why I was drawn to that period as a scholar and teacher. (Also, I love the language.) The moment we are living through now in the early 21st century is one of similarly rapid change, and we are turning to many of the core ideas cultivated in that period as touchstones. For example, many in my generation grew up assuming the primary importance of freedom of expression as a core feature of a pluralistic democracy. We need to teach what that Constitutional right means very systematically now; knowing its history helps me do that. 

Our Constitution insists that dissent and differing viewpoints are sources of strength for the polity and for each individual. Those key ideas initially matured during the 17th century. I think of Milton’s arguments against censorship in Areopagitica, for example: “When there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions: for opinion in good persons is but knowledge in the making…” and as he argues, censorship inhibits moral growth. This ethos infuses our bills of rights, including the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which in turn inspired the U.S. Bill of Rights. Understanding this history helps me articulate why upholding these principles matters so much now, at a great university, dedicated to the maturation of citizens and the creation of new knowledge. 

About Katherine A. Rowe

Katherine A. Rowe, a nationally recognized innovator in higher education, became the 28th president of William & Mary on July 1, 2018.

Under Rowe's leadership, William & Mary has advanced a whole-institution approach to learning. The cross-university initiatives she has cultivated include a central Entrepreneurship Hub, a Studio for Teaching & Learning Innovation, W&M's first Sustainability Plan and Climate Action Roadmap, realization of William & Mary's long-planned Memorial to the Enslaved, a Veteran to Executive Transition program, and an Institute for Integrative Conservation.

Also under Rowe’s leadership, William & Mary has held tuition flat for five years and successfully closed its For the Bold campaign in June 2020, raising just over $1 billion. Rowe oversaw the creation of William & Mary's ambitious strategic plan, Vision 2026, via an inclusive, multi-year planning process. During the first phase of planning, the university community came together to craft William & Mary's first-ever statement of shared values.

As president, Rowe led William & Mary's effective COVID-19 response, joining forces with the City of Williamsburg and other key local partners to keep the Tidewater region as safe as possible. In the 2020- 21 academic year William & Mary continued in-person learning, uninterrupted – flexibly adapting every university practice and system to ensure that students could maintain momentum to their degrees. Key cross-institutional efforts were launched during the pandemic: leading to enhanced career development for students, a unified approach to Communications and Marketing, and a whole-university Council for Community Partnerships.

Rowe serves on the Northern Virginia Technology Council, the Virginia Business and Higher Education Council Board, RVA757 Connects, and the GoVA Region 5 Council. Rowe was named to the Virginia Business Virginia 500 Power List in 2020 and 2021. In 2020, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education named Rowe one of the top 35 women in higher education.

Earlier in her career, Rowe co-founded and served for several years as the CEO of Luminary Digital Media, which developed a series of educational apps enhancing student engagement and learning of classic Shakespeare 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. Her areas of research and scholarship include Shakespeare, Milton, Renaissance drama and media history. Dr. Rowe is a past president of the Shakespeare Association of America.

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. Rowe shares her love of Ultimate with her spouse, Bruce Jacobson, William & Mary's First Gentleman.