Three Bryn Mawr Presidents Return to the Classroom: A Rare Convergence of Leadership and Teaching

When three former and current presidents of a single liberal arts institution announce they are stepping back into the classroom during the same academic year, the gesture carries far more weight than a routine staffing update.

Bryn Mawr College, one of the historic Seven Sisters institutions, has confirmed that Kim Cassidy, Wendy Cadge, and Mary Patterson McPherson will each teach or convene programming across the 2026–27 academic calendar.

The arrangement is unusual not merely because of the seniority of the participants, but because it collapses the traditional distance between presidential administration and undergraduate instruction.

Presidencies in American higher education are frequently described as fundraising and governance roles, increasingly detached from the daily rhythms of seminars, office hours, and student writing conferences. What Bryn Mawr is demonstrating is a counter-model: leadership that remains pedagogically active, intellectually visible, and accountable to the same classroom standards expected of junior faculty.

Each of the three women brings a distinct scholarly identity to the table, and each has chosen a course or series that reflects her own research and convictions rather than a generic institutional obligation.

The story also raises a broader question about what presidential teaching signals to students, alumni, and peer institutions. When a president emerita designs a first-year seminar, when a sitting president leads a discussion-based course on sacred space, and when a ninety-one-year-old former president convenes a seven-week online conversation series, the message is that intellectual life at a college is not a phase one graduates out of. It is a lifelong practice, and the presidency is simply one chapter within it.

TL;DR Bryn Mawr College will have three presidents—past and present—teaching during the 2026–27 academic year. Kim Cassidy, president emerita, teaches a first-year Emily Balch Seminar titled Finding Purpose in Higher Education, alongside educational psychology and a spring course on meaning and joy. Current president Wendy Cadge leads a fall seminar called Sacred Spaces, Bryn Mawr and Beyond, drawing on her sociology research into religion and pluralism. Mary Patterson McPherson, president from 1978 to 1997, hosts a seven-week online conversation series in the spring connecting alumni, students, and faculty around intellectual and civic life. The convergence illustrates a rare model of presidential engagement with undergraduate teaching.

The Institutional Logic Behind Presidential Teaching

Presidents who return to the classroom are making an argument about the nature of academic leadership itself. The role is often consumed by budgets, accreditation, board relations, and capital campaigns, leaving little room for the scholarly work that originally earned these leaders their credentials.

Teaching reconnects them to the core product of the institution and to the students whose experience justifies the entire administrative apparatus.

At Bryn Mawr, the decision appears deliberate rather than symbolic. Each course is tied to the president's own intellectual formation, and each format—seminar, lecture course, online series—reflects a different mode of engagement.

The college is effectively using its most senior figures as living demonstrations of what a liberal arts education produces over a lifetime of inquiry.

Why Seniority Matters in the Seminar Room

A first-year seminar taught by a president emerita carries a particular kind of authority. Students encounter someone who has shaped the institution's mission statement, negotiated its finances, and represented it globally, now sitting with them around a discussion table.

That juxtaposition can be disorienting in productive ways, because it removes the assumption that administrative power and intellectual curiosity occupy separate spheres.

Cassidy's seminar, Finding Purpose in Higher Education, is especially pointed given that she helped draft the college's 2019 mission statement while serving as its ninth president. The course invites first-year students to interrogate the very purposes their institution claims to serve, with the person who wrote those claims present in the room. Few pedagogical setups are more candid.

The Emily Balch Seminar as a Signature Format

Emily Balch Seminars introduce first-year students to the practices of discussion, reading, and writing that will define their undergraduate careers. Assigning a president emerita to teach one is a statement about the value the college places on that foundational experience. It also ensures that the seminar's intellectual standards are modeled by someone with deep institutional memory.

Cassidy's additional teaching load—educational psychology and a spring course co-taught on meaning, joy, and connection—suggests she is not treating the seminar as a ceremonial cameo. The combination of a first-year writing-intensive course with upper-level psychology and a thematic spring offering reflects a full scholarly portfolio rather than a single goodwill gesture.

Wendy Cadge and the Sociology of Sacred Space

Wendy Cadge arrives at the classroom as a working sociologist whose research examines religion in public institutions, religious diversity, and pluralism. Her fall seminar, Sacred Spaces, Bryn Mawr and Beyond, translates that scholarly agenda into an undergraduate course that treats the campus itself as a field site. Students are not merely reading about sacred space; they are examining the spaces they inhabit daily.

This approach reflects a broader trend in the sociology of religion, where scholars increasingly study how institutions accommodate pluralism in practical, spatial, and administrative terms. Cadge's work has long focused on chaplaincy, hospitals, and the military as arenas where religious difference must be negotiated. Bringing that lens to a women's liberal arts college is a natural extension of her research program.

Religion, Pluralism, and the Campus as Laboratory

Sacred space is never neutral territory. A meditation room, a chapel, a multifaith center, and a quiet garden each encode assumptions about who belongs and what counts as spiritual practice. Cadge's seminar invites students to interrogate those assumptions using sociological methods, which means observation, interviews, and careful attention to institutional policy.

The course title's "and Beyond" signals that the inquiry extends past the campus gates. Students may examine how hospitals, prisons, airports, and universities across the region design spaces for religious and secular observance. That comparative dimension gives the seminar analytical reach beyond a single institution's self-understanding.

What a Sitting President Brings to the Seminar Table

A current president teaching an undergraduate seminar occupies an unusual position. She holds authority over budgets, hiring, and strategy, yet in the classroom she is one voice among many, expected to listen as much as to lecture.

That dual role can model intellectual humility for students who might otherwise view administrators only as distant decision-makers.

Cadge's presence also gives the seminar access to real institutional questions. If students identify a gap in how the college supports religious diversity, the person with the power to act on that finding is in the room. The pedagogical and the administrative become continuous rather than separated by layers of committee process.

Mary Patterson McPherson and the Long Arc of Civic Conversation

Mary Patterson McPherson led Bryn Mawr from 1978 to 1997, a period spanning nearly two decades of significant change in American higher education. At ninety-one, she will host a seven-week online conversation series in the spring, bringing together alumni, students, faculty, and others to discuss intellectual and civic life. The format is deliberately inclusive rather than hierarchical.

McPherson's stated anticipation of learning from Bryn Mawr faculty is itself a pedagogical stance. It positions the former president as a participant in an ongoing conversation rather than an authority delivering conclusions.

That posture is consistent with the seminar traditions the college prizes and with the idea that intellectual life is a shared practice across generations.

Why a Seven-Week Online Series Matters

Online programming has become a permanent feature of alumni engagement, but its quality varies widely. A seven-week series curated by a former president signals seriousness of purpose, because it demands sustained attention from participants rather than a single webinar appearance. The length itself is a commitment device for everyone involved.

Bringing alumni, students, and faculty into the same conversation space is also structurally significant. These groups often occupy separate institutional silos, with alumni engaged through fundraising, students through coursework, and faculty through governance. A shared intellectual forum temporarily dissolves those boundaries and allows genuine exchange across roles.

Institutional Memory as a Teaching Resource

Presidents who served decades ago carry institutional memory that no archive can fully replicate. McPherson can speak to decisions, debates, and turning points from direct experience, giving participants a textured understanding of how the college evolved. That kind of testimony is invaluable for students studying higher education as a living system.

The conversation series also models a form of lifelong intellectual engagement that liberal arts colleges claim to cultivate. If a ninety-one-year-old former president is still convening discussions about civic life, the institution's rhetoric about education as a durable practice gains concrete illustration. The example is more persuasive than any mission statement.

What This Means for Liberal Arts Education

The Bryn Mawr arrangement arrives at a moment when small liberal arts colleges face intense pressure on enrollment, finances, and perceived relevance. Demonstrating that senior leadership remains intellectually engaged is one way to differentiate an institution in a crowded marketplace. It signals that the college's core product is genuine and not merely marketed.

Prospective students and their families increasingly ask what distinguishes one liberal arts college from another. Access to senior scholars, small seminars, and cross-generational intellectual communities are tangible answers. When presidents teach, those answers become verifiable rather than aspirational, and the institution's claims gain credibility with skeptical audiences.

Recruitment, Retention, and Reputation

Presidential teaching can function as a recruitment asset, particularly for students seeking mentorship and intellectual intimacy. A first-year seminar led by a president emerita is a distinctive offering that few peer institutions can match. It also supports retention by deepening students' early connection to the college's intellectual culture.

Reputationally, the arrangement generates the kind of coverage that money cannot easily buy. Stories about presidents returning to the classroom resonate because they counter cynical narratives about administrative bloat and detached leadership. They present higher education as a community of scholars rather than a bureaucratic enterprise.

The Risks and Limits of the Model

Presidential teaching is not without complications. A sitting president's schedule is unpredictable, and course continuity can suffer when governance crises arise. Students may also feel inhibited about challenging someone with institutional authority, which can dampen the candor that good seminars require.

These risks are manageable but real. Institutions adopting similar models should ensure that presidents teach courses where their expertise is genuine, that co-teachers or backup instructors are available, and that classroom dynamics are structured to reduce deference. The Bryn Mawr case suggests the benefits can outweigh the difficulties when the fit is thoughtful.

Cross-Generational Learning as Institutional Strategy

What unites the three Bryn Mawr offerings is a commitment to cross-generational learning. Cassidy teaches first-year students, Cadge teaches undergraduates, and McPherson convenes alumni alongside current students and faculty. Each format deliberately mixes cohorts that rarely share intellectual space, creating conditions for mutual instruction rather than one-way transmission.

This is a meaningful departure from the standard segmentation of higher education, where first-years, majors, graduate students, alumni, and faculty occupy separate programs with distinct calendars and cultures. Bryn Mawr's approach treats the college as a single learning community with multiple entry points, and it uses presidential stature to legitimize that integration.

The Value of Mixed Cohorts

Mixed cohorts produce learning that homogeneous groups cannot. First-year students encounter the perspectives of alumni who have applied their education over decades, while alumni encounter the questions and concerns of current undergraduates. Faculty gain insight into how their disciplines land outside the classroom, and administrators hear unfiltered reactions.

The seven-week online series is particularly well suited to this purpose because it removes geographic barriers. Alumni who cannot return to campus can participate, and the extended timeline allows relationships to develop rather than remaining transactional. Length and format together create the conditions for genuine intellectual community.

Precedents and Parallels Elsewhere

Other institutions have experimented with presidents teaching, but rarely with three from the same college in a single year. The scale of the Bryn Mawr arrangement is what makes it notable.

It suggests a coordinated strategy rather than a series of individual decisions, and it invites scrutiny of whether the model can be sustained.

Peer institutions may watch closely to see whether the arrangement produces measurable benefits in student satisfaction, alumni engagement, or admissions yield. If it does, the model could spread, particularly among small colleges seeking distinctive ways to demonstrate the value of a residential liberal arts education.

The Broader Significance for Higher Education Leadership

Bryn Mawr's experiment speaks to a persistent tension in academic administration: whether leaders should be managers or scholars. The dominant trend in recent decades has pushed presidents toward fundraising, crisis management, and external relations, often at the expense of scholarly identity. Teaching reasserts the older ideal of the president as first among scholarly peers.

That reassertion matters because it shapes how faculty, students, and the public perceive the purpose of a college. If presidents never teach, the implicit message is that scholarship is a credential rather than a vocation.

When they do teach, the message reverses, and the institution's intellectual claims acquire a visible embodiment in its most senior figures.

Reclaiming the Scholar-Administrator Ideal

The scholar-administrator ideal has deep roots in American higher education, particularly in small colleges where presidents once taught regularly. Its decline reflects the growing complexity of institutional management, but complexity does not make the ideal obsolete. It simply makes it harder to sustain without deliberate effort and structural support.

Bryn Mawr's arrangement shows that the ideal remains viable when presidents choose courses aligned with their expertise and when the institution protects time for teaching. The model does not require every president to teach every year, but it does require a culture that treats teaching as central rather than ornamental.

Lessons for Other Institutions

Colleges considering similar initiatives should begin with fit rather than publicity. A president teaching outside her scholarly competence invites skepticism, while one teaching within it earns credibility. The course should also be designed to withstand scheduling disruptions, perhaps through co-teaching or modular structures that do not depend on a single instructor's availability.

Finally, institutions should measure outcomes honestly. Student evaluations, enrollment patterns, alumni participation, and faculty perceptions can all indicate whether presidential teaching delivers on its promise. The Bryn Mawr case offers a compelling example, but its value will ultimately be judged by what students and the community actually experience.