History has been made at Yale University as Maurie McInnis becomes the first woman to be named permanent president of the Ivy League school.

McInnis, who starts her new job in July, has strong ties to New Haven, Connecticut. She has served as a Yale trustee since 2022 and earned master's degree and doctorate from Yale, per the school's announcement Wednesday morning.

The 58-year-old has been president of Stony Brook University on Long Island in New York since 2020 and previously served in academic positions at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Virginia, where she received her bachelor's degree in art history. 

Yale has had only one other female leader, the historian Hanna Holborn Gray, who served as interim president from 1977 to 1978. It is the last Ivy League school to name a permanent woman president.

McInnis's selection concludes a nearly nine-month selection process that kicked off last August when Yale's outgoing president, Peter Salovey, announced that he was leaving his post after the 2023-2024 academic year.

Joshua Bekenstein, a senior advisor at Bain Capital who heads the Yale Corporation, the university's principal governing board, said the search committee had undertaken a "robust" selection process in the school's announcement. 

He told the Yale Daily News that the committee received nominations for more than 100 leaders in higher education and other sectors, but McInnis was selected by unanimous vote.

McInnis is stepping into the role at a complicated time in higher education, which has been rattled by on-campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war. 

The presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania — both of whom are women — recently resigned amid scrutiny after testifying about campus antisemitism before a congressional committee. The president of Cornell University announced her resignation on May 9. 

"There's no doubt that this is an incredibly complicated moment, not just for higher education, but in the world," McInnis told the Yale Daily News. "And I look forward to working with this community on those challenges as we build our collaborative response."

Both Yale and Stony Brook were among the colleges and universities across the U.S. that saw protests over the war. 

In an interview with the Yale Daily News, McInnis expressed her gratitude for being elected president and reiterated her commitment to "tackle the world's most pressing challenges."

She added that she was well aware of how her own history-making appointment means that she can "play an important role as a role model." 

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