Sarah R. Bolton joined The College of Wooster in 2016 as its 12th president. She is the first woman and first physicist to serve in the permanent role of president. During her tenure at Wooster, Bolton has championed significant transformations of the campus community and overall student experience by catalyzing investments in virtually every area of the College and building strategic connections across disciplines, individuals, teams, cultures, and differences to support the thriving of every student.
Prior to joining Wooster, Bolton served for six years as Dean of the College at Williams College, overseeing many aspects of student life. She started at Williams as an assistant professor of physics in 1995 and was promoted to associate professor in 2001 and full professor in 2007—the first woman to reach this milestone in physics at Williams. She served as chair of Williams’ physics department from 2007 to 2010 and won the college’s Outstanding Mentor Award for Fostering Inclusive Academic Excellence in 2009. As a professor, she advised a dozen senior theses and more than 20 student research projects.
As president, Bolton worked to build on Wooster’s history of academic excellence by expanding experiential learning opportunities, supporting strategic new academic pathways and connections, and cultivating a more global and anti-racist community and curriculum.
Bolton earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and biophysics from Brown University in 1988, a master’s degree in physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1991, and a doctorate in physics, also from Berkeley, in 1995.