President Sian Leah Beilock is a deep believer in multiple selves. In her case, she says, there’s “my mom self, my research self, and my president self.” At the heart of all of Beilock’s identities, though, is a drive for excellence. “My goal is to get everyone, in addition to myself, to perform at a level where one plus one equals three,” she says, “where the whole is more than the sum of the parts.”
In service of this goal, six years ago, Beilock took on the role of eighth president of Barnard College. Now, it has likewise motivated her decision to become the first woman president of Dartmouth. “I’m sad to leave Barnard,” she says. “But I hope people see this as another legacy of Barnard helping women to go break barriers and change the world.”
Beilock took office at Barnard shortly after the 2016 presidential election. Her term encompassed years of unprecedented national and international upheaval:
- the COVID-19 pandemic
- refugee and immigration crises
- climate disasters
- the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements
- mass shootings
- reckonings over the influence of social media and fake news on society
- and much more.
The future, meanwhile, seems poised to become only more tumultuous and uncertain.
As a scientist, Beilock feels strongly that one way to meet the challenges we face now and on the horizon is to nurture the next generation of talented scientists, engineers, and technologists. “As a society, we need more people focused on critical issues in STEM,” she says — and especially “more women.”
From the beginning, Beilock set out to raise the eminence of Barnard’s math, science, and technology programs to parallel that of its renowned arts and humanities programs. She created new five-year undergraduate and master’s degree programs with Columbia University in engineering, quantitative social science, public health, and more.
She also added new undergraduate majors, including in cognitive science and computer science, and launched Barnard’s Department of Neuroscience & Behavior. More than 40% of Barnard students are now math and science majors, up from 34% when Beilock became president in 2017.
She credits much of that success to providing students with both opportunities and faculty role models in STEM.
“We know when students don’t see themselves in a particular field, they’re less likely to go into it even if they are interested,” she says. “My goal is to really help every student pursue their passion.”
For Beilock, that passion means “helping people’s great ideas get traction,” whether in a classroom or at an entire institution. In her own lab, which she moved to Barnard from the University of Chicago, she continued to mentor undergraduate students and a postdoctoral scholar. As a cognitive scientist, her research focuses on how children and adults learn and perform at their best, especially in high-stress environments.
Beilock herself has mastered the art of performing under such circumstances; on a recent afternoon, and within the span of just a couple hours, she
- prepped for her last Barnard board meeting
- flashed relaxed smiles for a photo shoot for this magazine
- took an urgent phone call from her mother
- and then gave an on-point interview for this story.
The interview was cut short by 20 minutes, but she didn’t “choke” — which, incidentally, was the title of her first book on the subject. Rather, she clearly articulated, in the condensed time she had, her reflections on the meaningfulness of her time at Barnard.
My goal is to get everyone, in addition to myself, to perform at a level where one plus one equals three, where the whole is more than the sum of the parts.
Beilock also knows from her science that success, whether academic, professional, or personal, can occur only if people are given the right tools. Well-being is one of the most important such tools. Beilock manages her own well-being through morning runs and great food, both on the town at restaurants and in the kitchen at home (where she especially enjoys her 11-year-old daughter’s latest baking creations).
Beilock has already blazed a successful career for herself, though, which is not the case for Barnard students who now face a mixed bag of excitement and anxiety at having to make their own way in the world. This pressure can and does take a toll. Even before the pandemic, Beilock knew through her research that young people — especially young women — were suffering record-breaking levels of depression and anxiety.
In a recent study published in Science Advances, Beilock and her colleagues found that AP calculus students who are anxious about math tend to avoid doing difficult practice problems prior to a test and that their grades suffer as a result.
While this avoidance is understandable — who wants to do something that makes them feel uncomfortable? — it does suggest how to improve performance: find ways to help support students so they can face and overcome the things that make them anxious rather than avoid them and suffer as a result.
With all this in mind, Beilock set out at Barnard “to really normalize the fact that we all need help sometimes,” she says. The culmination of this effort will be the Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being, construction on which began in February. Once complete, Barnard students, faculty, and staff will be able to come to the center for everything from meditation and financial literacy classes to guidance for promoting mental health for themselves and others. The ultimate goal, she adds, is “to weave well-being into everything we do.”
Financial security and a sense of belonging are other crucial elements of well-being. Conversations with students about these topics caused Beilock to seriously consider the financial barriers faced by many students — disproportionately young women of color — navigating academia.
To ease that burden, Beilock stepped up financial aid availability and created Access Barnard, a center that provides both information and community for low-income, first-generation, and international students throughout their college career. “I believe very strongly that you don’t get the best ideas and knowledge unless you have diverse people with different lived experiences around the table,” she says. “Part of that is reducing barriers to entry.”
Beilock wanted to ensure, too, that the education, community, and life lessons students gain at Barnard extend well beyond the few years they spend enrolled there. To that end, she helped to create Beyond Barnard, a one-stop shop for career services, graduate fellowships, internships, and jobs. Beyond Barnard exists as both a website and a physical office and offers such resources as career advice, workshops, and networking opportunities to both students and alumnae.
As Beilock moves beyond Barnard, she says her connection to the College will endure. “I know it will be lifelong,” she says. She stresses, too, that the value she has brought to Barnard goes both ways. “It’s certainly changed my life,” she says of her experience serving as president. “I’ve learned so much, and I’m honored to be part of this community.”
Photo by Victoria Cohen
