Pitzer College President Laura Skandera Trombley to Deliver Commencement Address at Pepperdine University

LST-Nov-2012[1]

Claremont, Calif. (May 14, 2013) — Pitzer College President Laura Skandera Trombley will address education graduates at the commencement ceremonies of the Pepperdine University Graduate School of Education and Psychology (GSEP) and receive an honorary doctorate on Saturday, May 18, 2013 at 2 p.m.

“We are honored to have Dr. Trombley address our education graduates, as both an accomplished leader in education and as a Pepperdine alumna,” said Margaret J. Weber, dean, GSEP. “Her impact on the students she has encountered through her stellar two decade-long career will be a great source of inspiration for our graduates.”

A nationally-recognized champion of liberal arts education, Trombley has presided over Pitzer during a time of expansion, raising the College’s profile and academic reputation. She has overseen the creation of several collegiate centers and majors, including the Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability. For the past three years, Pitzer students have won more Fulbright Fellowships than students at any undergraduate college in the United States and the most per capita for nine of the last 10 years.

In addition to her leadership of Pitzer, Trombley is a highly respected scholar of Mark Twain. During her doctoral research she discovered one of the largest caches of Mark Twain letters to date. The most recent of Trombley’s five books, Mark Twain’s Other Woman: The Hidden Story of His Final Years, was published in 2010 and released in paperback the following year. She is a frequent guest book reviewer for the Los Angeles Times and her op-eds and commentaries have been featured in The New York Times, NPR, The Huffington Post and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

In 2012, President Barack Obama named Trombley to the 12-member Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. She also sits on the boards of the Association of Governing Boards and the Claremont University Consortium. She has received numerous honors, including the CEO Leadership Award from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education District VII and the Dorothy Trux Award for an Emerging Professional Administrator from the National Association for Women in Education.

Trombley earned both her bachelor’s degree in English and humanities and her master’s degree in English from Pepperdine University. She received her PhD in English from the University of Southern California where she was a Virginia Barbara Middleton Scholar and a recipient of the Lester and Irene Finkelstein Fellowship for Outstanding Humanities Student. In 2002, Pepperdine University awarded Trombley the Accomplished Alumna Award.

Leave a Reply

About Pitzer College

Pitzer College is a nationally top-ranked undergraduate liberal arts and sciences institution. A member of The Claremont Colleges, Pitzer offers a distinctive approach to a liberal arts education by linking intellectual inquiry with interdisciplinary studies, cultural immersion, social responsibility, and community involvement. For more information, please visit www.pitzer.edu.

Media Contact

Office of Communications
[email protected]