Former Trinity, Berkshire Community College Presidents Join HGSE as Presidents-in-Residence

Joanne Berger-Sweeney, the former president of Trinity College, and Ellen Kennedy, who retired in June as president of Berkshire Community College, are serving as the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Judith Block McLaughlin Presidents-In-Residence for the 2026-27 academic year.

The program brings together former college and university presidents to HGSE to work alongside faculty, sit in on courses, and advise students in the school’s higher education programs. Presidents-in-Residence attend classes with students, contribute to discussions, and hold office hours for career and academic advising.

Berger-Sweeney and Kennedy bring experience from distinct corners of higher education: a private liberal arts college in Hartford and the first community college established in Massachusetts.

Berger-Sweeney said she was drawn to the role by the opportunity to interact with students regularly.

“What excites me most is the chance to be in the room with the next generation of education leaders — the bright, committed minds who will shape how we teach and who we reach,” she said.

Berger-Sweeney, a neuroscientist by training, was the first woman and the first African American to lead Trinity when she was inaugurated in 2014. She did not teach regularly during her 11-year presidency and said the hardest part of returning to the classroom has been adjusting to instructing about different subject material.

“The biggest adjustment is teaching something quite different,” she said. “Leadership is different from my subject matter, which is neuroscience.”

She added that she has been struck by the range of students in the classroom, which includes recent college graduates and higher education professionals with years of administrative experience.

Kennedy, who spent 14 years as Berkshire Community College’s seventh president, said her role at HGSE has centered on supporting lecturer Francesca Purcell’s teaching and bringing her own experiences to bear on course readings.

“I am adding context, sharing experiences, commenting on the readings, and a more application approach to how that theory translates into action,” Kennedy said.

She said the translation from theory to practice can be demanding, pointing to the difficulty of keeping pace with whom she called “some really savvy students” and anticipating the questions they bring to class.

“I wanted to make sure that I am either able to explain why my experience is different from what they might have read about, or why the data that I’m talking about might be slightly different from what they’re looking at,” she said.

Judith Block McLaughlin, a HGSE senior lecturer, founded the program in 2001 after inviting retiring presidents to visit her classroom. More than 30 higher education leaders have participated since, and the program was permanently endowed in 2023 and renamed in McLaughlin’s honor ahead of her retirement.

Former Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow — who served as a president-in-residence from 2011 to 2013 — said the position gave him room to take stock of his own career.

“It provided the opportunity to reflect upon my own experience,” Bacow said. “I greatly enjoyed teaching the students. I developed some wonderful relationships with the students, and I think I learned a lot myself from these experiences.”

Berger-Sweeney said she has found the students’ interest in the field striking at a moment when higher education is under scrutiny.

“It is wonderful, truly wonderful, to be back in the classroom,” she said, “and to interact with students who are still very interested in higher education and higher education administration, despite some of what you hear in the news or see on television.”

—Staff writer Mahpara Faatin can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @mahparafaatin.