Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of articles profiling each of the four finalists in the search for Eastern’s next president.

Having gone back and forth between the Midwest and the East Coast for her entire academic and professional career, Margaret Madden said she is ready for another move back to the former.

“Without getting too stereotypic about people in different parts of the country, there is a kind of work ethic and character and appreciation things that I like about Midwesterners,” she said.

Madden, the provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of Potsdam in New York since 2002, is one of four finalists in the search for Eastern’s next president.

She is from Glen Ellyn, a west Chicago suburb, and got her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Wisconsin Madison.

She said several of her older brothers and sisters went to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, so she is familiar with that area of the state.

“I think one of the reasons I decided to go to Wisconsin was just to be different,” Madden said.

She also got a master’s and doctorate degree in psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

She got her first job teaching psychology at Franklin Pierce University in southern New Hampshire, where she worked for 11 years.

“Part way through my time there I started to do some administrative work, to be on some committees, coordinate an accreditation self study, and so on, and I also discovered that I like that too,” Madden said.

After doing some part-time administration work, Madden said she wanted to see what other possibilities were available, which was when she went back to the Midwest to be the associate dean of faculty and teach at Lawrence University in Wisconsin for six years.

Then, she said she ended up back on the East Coast at Long Island University for three years until she landed her current job at Potsdam.

Madden said she started studying psychology thinking she would be a counselor or clinical psychologist, but soon discovered more opportunities for research in social psychology.

“I was like a lot of psychology students,” she said. “People told me I was good with people.”

She said the women’s studies program was just beginning as she started her master’s, and she fell in love with that area, eventually writing on gender issues in higher education.

Madden said her research into the subject has become somewhat like peeling an onion as she digs into multiple layers.

“Gender has an influence on everybody, and it interacts with other types of variables like race or ethnicity or sexual orientation,” she said. “So when you think about the way that there may be different expectations for women and men, you have to go a little bit deeper and also think about whether there are different expectations for women of color versus white women and so on.”

Madden said her studies have influenced her style as a leader because she likes to focus on collaboration and is interested in solving complex problems.

She said she was impressed with Eastern’s campus when she visited for her interviews.

“It’s very attractive,” she said. “You’ve got buildings that come from a number of different eras, but they all sort of fit together.”

She said if she were selected to be president of Eastern, she would focus on looking for opportunities to raise funds for student programs, internships and other supplements to regular education, seeing as she was very involved in research as an undergraduate student and worked to increase such opportunities at Potsdam.

“I want to be with Eastern as it moves to the next level of excellence,” she said.

Stephanie Markham can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].