When Jennifer Scanlon arrived at the College in 2002 as a tenure-track professor to help build what is now the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies (GSWS) program, she didn’t expect to spend almost a decade in senior leadership. Now, after six years as senior vice president and dean for academic affairs, she’s preparing to return to the classroom.

Scanlon will step down from her administrative role at the end of the 2025-26 academic year. After a year-long sabbatical, she will return to teaching in the fall of 2027 as a professor in the GSWS department.

“I entered [higher education] very purposefully as a scholar and teacher,” Scanlon said. “Those were the things I wanted to pursue. I never would have dreamed that I would become a dean.”

Before coming to the College, Scanlon taught within the State University of New York (SUNY) system for 13 years, where she earned her bachelor’s, master’s and PhD degrees. When she received an invitation to apply to a position at the College, she admits she knew little about the College.

“It was only the second time I had been to Maine,” Scanlon said. “But I just couldn’t believe it when I got here—the incredible resources, the students. These were students who really wanted to learn and be challenged. It cemented what a privilege it would be to teach here.”

Although she came to the College to teach, Scanlon began taking on administrative responsibilities in 2013. She served as an associate dean and interim dean for academic affairs until 2017 before moving into her current role in 2020, at which point she stopped teaching. Scanlon guided the faculty through the challenges of remote teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic, expanded faculty development initiatives, supported interdisciplinary programs and worked to uphold shared governance across academic committees, according to an email Zaki sent to the Bowdoin community last week announcing Scanlon’s plans.

One of Scanlon’s defining commitments was advancing faculty diversity. Early in her time at the College, then President Barry Mills encouraged her to help shape a more inclusive academic community.

“We had done a good job diversifying the student body, but much less so with the faculty,” she said. “I wanted to play a serious role in changing that.”

That desire, she explained, made stepping into administrative work feel purposeful.

“When you make some change, you realize you have more to go. You don’t just invite people here—there’s so much work to do to welcome people, to retain people, to create environments where a more diverse faculty feel like this place is for them,” Scanlon said.

Now, as she looks ahead to her final year as a dean, Scanlon is focused on returning to her true passions: her scholarship and students.

“I have a milk crate under my desk with a scholarly project in it,” Scanlon said. “I miss being able to think about my own work and the questions I want to ask of the world.”

She is eager to reconnect with students through teaching, something she has sincerely missed.

“I loved having students in my everyday life,” she said. “A highlight of leaving the job will be being able to be with students more of the time.”

Scanlon will rejoin the GSWS department, which has grown significantly since she helped strengthen it more than two decades ago. Her work focuses on U.S. women’s history, consumer culture and feminist biography. Her publications include “Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown” and “Until There is Justice: The Life of Anna Arnold Hedgeman.”

“I want to be in conversation with my colleagues and contribute to where this program is going,” Scanlon said.

Scanlon hopes to teach some of her favorite courses again, including the first-year seminar “Bad Girls of the 1950s” and courses on consumer culture and the history of the suburbs.

As she prepares to close out her time in senior leadership, Scanlon hopes to focus on strengthening connections on campus.

“This is a really challenging moment in higher education, and I believe that we get through it by establishing and maintaining community,” she said. “It is really important right now that we have mutual respect and that we keep our eyes on what’s so important, which is this remarkable education that we provide for students.”