Forty years ago, Dr. Lisa Lambert began at Chatham University with a brand new doctorate degree in genetics, with plans of teaching biology.
Today, she is its 21st president.
The Board of Trustees unanimously elected Lambert as permanent University president, which Board Chair Kent McElhattan announced in an email to the Chatham community on Oct. 27. This follows Lambert’s term as interim president since June, replacing former President Dr. Rhonda Phillips after her resignation.
Lambert is ready to hit the ground running, she said, and apply what she learned as interim president to her new role.
“I think what brought students to Chatham should still be here,” Lambert said in an interview with the Communiqué before her official appointment. “We’re all Chatham, and I want everyone to feel comfortable going to someone for help.”
McElhattan said the Board met with Lambert regularly to evaluate her progress as interim president in categories such as communication, enrollment and finance management.
The interim role, which Lambert described as the “world’s longest job interview,” was established so the Chatham community could weigh in on Lambert becoming the University’s permanent president. To the Board, appointing Lambert was preferable to the alternative of hiring a headhunter firm, which would cost the University hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Lambert is “beloved across the board,” McElhattan said. “Professors, administration, trustees, students. Everybody respects her and believes she has Chatham’s best interest in mind.”
Increased communication is a priority for McElhattan as Board chair, and he feels that Lambert has also prioritized and delivered on communication in her time as interim president – a statement echoed by Hannah Hepler, director of Career Development.
“Something I admire about [Lambert] is her staying true to her values in times of adversity,” Hepler said. “Something that I believe is already a positive change is the more consistent and open communication that she has been doing when she was the interim president.”
Lambert met with Hepler and the Academic Success Center (ASC) multiple times during the interim period, attending staff meetings and participating in the ASC’s new show on Instagram, “Stuff with Staff and Facts with Faculty.”
“I feel that Lisa does an excellent job at being visible to the Chatham community and participating in different events on campus,” Hepler said.
Meeting with the ASC is part of what Lambert describes as “listening tours,” which she started in June.
“Some of it isn’t really that they want me to fix it,” Lambert said in an interview after her official appointment. “They just want me to hear what the day-to-day aggravations are. For me to understand what they’re facing.”
The No. 1 priority for Lambert on her “listening tours” is thanking everyone because much of the work done at Chatham goes “unseen and unthanked.”
“We need to acknowledge that all of the work is done by our colleagues, by our friends, by the people who support us,” Lambert said. “When we say ‘oh, IT hasn’t done something,’ there’s no IT. There’s people. And we need to be respectful of that.”
Dom Randall ‘27 interacts with the University president and the Board of Trustees regularly as part of their role as Chatham Student Government (CSG) executive president. Randall has met with Lambert several times this semester and describes those meetings as productive.
“She seems like she really cares, and I think that’s something that’s very important for a university president,” Randall said. “To be out there, to be in the paint with your students, to get to really connect with those students – she really embodies that, and I think that’s something that’s so powerful.”
Lambert started her time at Chatham as a biology professor in 1985. She said that meeting with students, such as attending CSG meetings, reminds her of her days in the classroom.
“I like to think that my background helps me stay organized and be a good researcher,” Lambert said. “I know to check my facts beforehand, and I’m ready to expect the unexpected.”
According to McElhattan, Lambert’s 40-plus years of experience at Chatham make her more qualified and passionate about her work.
“She has this wonderful exterior, warm and loving and wants the best for everybody, but you can scratch the surface and there’s an iron lady underneath,” he said. “She can be tough as nails, and that’s what we need. We need to be making some hard decisions. The financial deficit is not going to fix itself.”
