SOUTH HADLEY - Mount Holyoke College's 18th President will be Lynn Pasquerella, a medical ethicist and provost at the University of Hartford.

Pasquerella was chosen after a seven-month search to find a successor for current President Joanne V. Creighton. Creighton has served as the college's president since 1996. She announced her retirement in the spring.

Pasquerella, who graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1980, will assume the presidency on July 1, 2010.

"I am honored by this opportunity to return to Mount Holyoke as its 18th president," Pasquerella said in a statement. "Mount Holyoke provided me with a distinctive education- one that has resulted in my unyielding advocacy for liberal learning. I look forward to joining the Mont Holyoke community in pursuit of our common objective: promoting the freedom that lies at the heart of women's education, here as elsewhere, tomorrow as well as today."

Pasquerella will be introduced to the Mount Holyoke College community today at 4:15 p.m. during a ceremony at Chapin Auditorium.

She was approved in a unanimous vote by the college's Board of Trustees on Saturday, according to college officials who announced her presidency this morning.

"Lynn represents the ideal of a Mount Holyoke education," said Leslie Anne Miller, chair of the Board of Trustees, in a statement. "She embodies academic excellence, leadership, and a deep-seated commitment to the liberal arts and educational access. She is in the vanguard of a new generation of academic leaders who are taking the helm at a time of great challenge and opportunity for top liberal arts colleges. For Mount Holyoke, she is the perfect choice."

Pasquerella, a Connecticut native, began her academic career at the University of Rhode Island where she was a philosophy professor for 19 years. In 2004 she became the university's associate dean of the graduate school. Two years alter she was named vice provost for research and dean of the graduate school.

In 2008 she joined the University of Hartford as provost and chief academic officer.

Pasquerella's research interests include medical ethics, theoretical and applied ethics, metaphysics, public policy and the philosophy of law. She serves as project leader for a research team with the Africa Center for Engineering Social Solutions and is a principal investigator on a $3.5 million National Science Foundation "STEM" grant, which promotes the careers of women in the science, technology, engineering and math disciplines. She has received funding through the U.S. Department of Energy to work on ethical issues related to the Human Genome Project.

Pasquerella received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Brown University.

In 1998, she was honored by Change magazine and the American Association of Higher Education as one of the nation's "Young Leaders of the Academy."

Pasquerella will be a philosophy professor in addition to president while at Mount Holyoke College. She and her husband John Kuchle, a biologist and photographer, will be moving to South Hadley. The couple has twin 19-year-old sons: Spencer, who attends Hampshire College, and Pierce, who attends Mitchell College in Connecticut.