Nancy Vickers (President, 1997-2008)
Ying-he Liu, 2009
Oil on canvas, 152.4 x 102.235 cm
2010.21.1

As the seventh president of Bryn Mawr College, Nancy Vickers often emphasized the importance of community. She enabled student participation in communities both on and off campus, translating her message into a Civic Engagement Office, a proliferation of volunteer programs, and the reconstruction of Cambrian Row to house student affinity groups. When students pressed for community dialogue on issues of religion, gender, class, and race, she responded by implementing social justice programs to mixed success. Vickers balanced student needs with the demands of the institution’s financial health, leading two successful capital campaigns, doubling the endowment, establishing new academic programs, and renovating campus buildings. By the time she left the presidency, applications to the College had increased by forty percent. 

Like Wofford, Vickers stands in her blue Yale doctoral robes, but unlike him, she is draped in warm lighting. Artist Ying-he Liu paints Vickers with a faint smile and bright expression, further softening her depiction. She cradles a book, an antique copy of Dante’s The Divine Comedy gifted to her during her presidency by an alumna of the College. Vickers, a scholar of French, Italian, and Comparative Literature, routinely taught Dante at Bryn Mawr and went on to become the 17th President of the Dante Society of America. According to her, this special edition of The Divine Comedy is inscribed with the name of the alumna’s mother, a member of the class of 1884. The book is fittingly transformed for Vickers into a “very moving, touching reminder of Bryn Mawr’s tradition of community.”