Meet the Provost
MOLLY EASO SMITH, a scholar of English literature, whose publications include articles and books on Shakespeare and his contemporaries, became Wheaton's provost in July 2006. She served previously as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Seton Hall University; her teaching experience includes appointments at Ithaca College, Saint Louis University, and the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.
Born in Madras (also known as Chennai) in India, Smith attributes her commitment to higher education as rooted in an acute consciousness of its inaccessibility to individuals who molded her thinking during formative years, namely, her mother, her godmother, her grandmother, and her professors in India and the US. Post-colonial in her upbringing, Anglophile in her schooling, and north-American as well as Scottish in her academic development, Smith regards this extraordinary combination -- of dominant and subordinated cultures that formulated her identity -- as a healthy and providential happenstance from which she derives hope, strength, and will.
Smith relaxes by holidaying in St. Croix with her grandson, Eldan, and by writing short fiction, a habit she developed after arriving at Wheaton and which she describes as a respite from the challenges that accompany her role as an academic officer of the college.
Meet the Provost's Office staff