First Woman Will Head Scripps College

An attorney and high-ranking official at Dartmouth College has been appointed the first woman president in the 63-year history of Scripps College, a liberal arts school for women in Claremont, officials announced Monday.

With the appointment of Nancy Y. Bekavac, 42, Scripps alumni won their campaign for a woman to succeed John H. Chandler, who resigned last year after heading the campus for 13 years. Bekavac also will be the first woman president at any of the six schools in the Claremont Colleges consortium, of which Scripps is a member.

“I think Nancy Bekavac will make an exceptionally strong president and a remarkable role model for young women,” said Martha Hammer, a Los Angeles attorney and Scripps alumna who was head of the presidential search committee. “She is someone who is going to make young women be better than they are, which to me is what education should be.”

Hammer stressed that her panel did not set out to find only female candidates, although all six finalists were women.

Since October, 1988, Bekavac has been counselor to the president of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, with responsibilities in planning, budgeting, public affairs and academics. Before that, she was executive director of the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, a Rhode Island-based organization that funds coveted fellowships, one of which Bekavac received after being graduated from Swarthmore College. Bekavac has a law degree from Yale University, worked in a Los Angeles law firm for 11 years and was an adjunct professor at UCLA Law School.

In a telephone interview Monday, Bekavac said she hopes to help Scripps “find what the best education for women will be in the 21st Century.” She stressed that she believes the best undergraduate education can be obtained at small, private schools and that women’s colleges produce a disproportionately high number of graduates who go on to earn more advanced degrees.

Scripps, which has about 600 students, is one of only three women’s colleges left in California. Mills College in Oakland and Mt. St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles are the other two. Twenty years ago, there were about a dozen women’s schools in the state, but most either turned coeducational, merged with men’s schools or closed, according to education experts. Mills is studying the possibility of going co-ed.

However, Scripps is committed to remaining a women’s school, officials, including Bekavac, said. Its setting within the Claremont Colleges--which include Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer and Claremont Graduate School--allows Scripps students to take classes with and socialize with men. And the recent completion of a $41-million fund-raising drive gave Scripps more financial security.

Chandler left the campus in June to work on a book in Britain. Since then, former Provost Howard Brooks has temporarily served as president. He is expected to carry on in that role until Bekavac takes office July 1.