Laura E. McGrane

The Provost is the Chief Academic Officer of the College and functions as a strategic partner to the President and Cabinet, with responsibility of maintaining a focus on the College’s mission and vision and significant budgetary and other authority in addition to general oversight of the academic program. The Provost participates in all promotion, tenure, and review decisions. The Provost has responsibility for allocating and reviewing course releases for members of the faculty and general oversight of academic spaces.

Consulting with the Dean of the Faculty, the Provost considers sabbatical and leave requests, determines faculty salary raises, appoints Department Heads and Program Chairs, and reviews their annual reports. The Provost prioritizes and approves staffing requests in consultation with the Staffing and Compensation Subcommittee of the Faculty Affairs and Resources Committee. The Provost also represents the College in roles mandated in the Faculty Handbook, and names members and chairs of various appointed committees.

The Provost serves ex officio on the Advocacy and Coordination Council, Faculty Affairs and Resources Committee, Governance, and the Promotion, Tenure, and Review Committee.

The Provost reports to the President.

Laura McGrane, who joined Lafayette in 2024, is the College’s chief academic officer, overseeing all academic departments, programs, and operations. McGrane has more than 20 years of academic and administrative leadership experience, overseeing strategic and academic planning, spearheading capital projects, and leading institutional grants. At Haverford College, she served as the Associate Provost for Strategic Initiatives, founding director of Visual Culture Arts and Media, Koshland Director of the Hurford Center for the Arts & Humanities, and chair of the English Department. McGrane has also led higher education initiatives on a national level. An American Council on Education (ACE) fellow, McGrane was a District Secretary for the Rhodes Trust for over a decade and co-founder of The Trico Digital Humanities Initiative. She earned her B.A. in English and American literature from the College of Saint Benedict, as well as a B.A. in English language and literature and the MSc in comparative and international education from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. She received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from Stanford University.