Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) dean Claudine Gay today announced that Nancy Coleman, currently associate provost and director of strategic growth initiatives at Wellesley College, will become dean of the Division of Continuing Education (DCE, the Harvard extension school) effective July 13.
Coleman succeeds Huntington D. Lambert, who assumed the post in 2013 and led a period of enormous growth—particularly online—before retiring at the end of last year. Beyond educating thousands of extension students, the division has been an important financial resource for FAS, generating unrestricted cash to support the faculty’s academic mission; the constraints on its in-person classes, and on the campus-based components of its online offerings, have figured in FAS’s pandemic-related financial challenges, along with those facing other University extension- and continuing-education operations.
In her announcement, Gay noted that dean-designate Coleman “led an era of innovation for Wellesley Extended,” the unit that includes summer programs, online learning, and professional education. Before arriving at Wellesley in 2016, she served as vice president of global academic services at Keypath Education and, previously, as director of distance education at Boston University, where she oversaw all online degrees and certificates. A graduate of Stonehill College, Coleman earned an M.B.A. from Boston University’s Questrom School of Management and an Ed.D. at George Washington University.
