Emory University Selects First Female President

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Emory University's new president, Claire Sterk, will be the school's 20th since it was founded in 1836.

Atlanta's Emory University has chosen its first female president. Claire Sterk will take over for President James Wagner when he steps down in August. 

Emory’s Board of Trustees approved her appointment with a unanimous vote on Friday after a six-month search by the school’s Presidential Selection Committee.

Sterk said, as president, she’ll be the university’s storyteller.

“[The job] will require me to be able to tell the Emory story right and make sure that it’s accurate and resonates with people in order to be able to bring in new resources so that Emory faculty, staff, and student can do what they would like to do.”

Wagner announced his plans to retire last September, 12 years after becoming Emory’s president. 

During his time at the school’s helm, he led Emory's largest fundraising campaign, raising $1.7 billion, and the development of the university's first vision statement.

But Wagner also faced challenges that put him and Emory in the national spotlight.

He received criticism in 2013 for citing the U.S. Constitution’s Three-Fifths Compromise, where northern and southern states agreed to count slaves as three-fifths of a person when determining representation, as an example of good political compromise. Wagner later apologized for his comments.

And earlier this year, Wagner had to handle student protests after an incident where pro-Trump messages were written in chalk on Emory’s campus. The event, which gained national attention, came to be known as “The Chalkening.”

Wagner weighed in, defending the need for free speech on campus, and a school committee later said the chalk messages were protected under Emory’s Open Expression Policy.

For her part, Sterk said she’s not afraid of public unrest on Emory’s campus.

“I actually believe that we are the perfect place to address those. But also, it’s to be part of our mission to make sure that we all continue to grow and that we’re prepared to deal with the social, economic, and cultural challenges that we have in our time.”

A native of the Netherlands, Sterk came to Emory's Rollins School of Public Health in 1995 and currently serves as the university’s provost and executive vice president of academic affairs.

Emory says Sterk and her husband, Kirk Elifson, who teaches at Rollins, have brought more than $33 million dollars in research funding to the university in their time there.

Sterk starts her tenure as president September 1.