President's Biography
Laura Skandera Trombley is the fifth president of Pitzer College. In the tenth year of her presidency, she is known by the Pitzer community for her extraordinarily high level of energy and devotion to the College. Through her support and with her careful shepherding, the institution’s faculty and student excellence has become widely recognized and its progressive ideals highly regarded.
Under her leadership, Pitzer’s academic and co-curricular programs have been enhanced with an infusion of research and awards funding for faculty and students and the establishment of several new academic centers and majors. The residential life program has been radically transformed with the construction of four new mixed-use, gold LEED rated residence hall buildings, and the existing buildings and grounds have been thoroughly revitalized. In her second year as President she secured the largest single-donor gift since the institution’s founding and by the fifth year of her presidency the College’s endowment had increased by 136 percent. Since her arrival as president, Pitzer College has received more Fulbright Fellowships per 1000 students than any other college or university in the US. In 2010 eleven percent of the graduating class was awarded Fulbright Fellowships.
President Trombley is a noted Mark Twain scholar and in March 2010 completed her fifth book, Mark Twain's Other Woman: The Hidden Story of His Final Years, published by Knopf. The paperback edition will be issued on March 8, 2011. Her other books include Mark Twain in the Company of Women (1994), Constructing Mark Twain: New Directions in Scholarship (2002), Critical Essays on Maxine Hong Kingston (1998) and Epistemology: Turning Points in the History of Poetic Knowledge (1986). As a graduate student she discovered the largest known cache of Mark Twain letters and she appeared in Ken Burns' documentary on Mark Twain. She is frequently invited to speak on Twain and did so around the country for the national book tour of her fifth book.
In addition to the dozens of scholarly articles she has authored, President Trombley is also widely published on issues affecting US higher education. She is a member of the Chronicle of Higher Education/New York Times Higher Education Cabinet, the Council of Presidents of the Association of Governing Boards, and the Council on Foreign Relations Higher Education Working Group on Global Issues. She serves on the board of trustees of The Webb Schools and is an elected member the San Gabriel Chapter of the Young President’s Organization, The Trusteeship, and the Rotary Club of Claremont.
Previous to joining Pitzer College, President Trombley earned tenure in three years as an associate professor of English at SUNY Potsdam and held several administrative posts including assistant provost. In four more years, President Trombley was named full professor and dean of the faculty and vice president of academic affairs at Coe College.
President Trombley attended Pepperdine University at age 16 and, after earning her bachelor's with a double major in English and Humanities, she graduated from Pepperdine with her master's in English summa cum laude. She received her PhD in English from the University of Southern California where she was the Lester and Irene Finkelstein Fellow and received the Virginia Barbara Middleton Scholarship.