Sharon Latchaw Hirsh, Ph.D.

13th President of Rosemont College, 2006 -

Born in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, President Hirsh was raised in a home that strongly emphasized education - her late mother was a fourth grade teacher. Upon entering Rosemont College in 1966, President Hirsh knew she wanted to emulate her mother and made education the focus of her studies. After completing her undergraduate degree in the History of Art and Studio Art from Rosemont College, Dr. Hirsh returned to her hometown where she continued her education at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her master degree in the History of Art in 1971; three years later she completed her doctoral degree. That same year, she joined the faculty of Dickinson College.

While at Dickinson, Dr. Hirsh came to hold an endowed chair as the Charles A. Dana Professor of Art History. She served as Director of the Trout Gallery and the chair of the Department of Art and Art History. In 1981, Dr. Hirsh was awarded the Ganoe Award for Inspirational Teaching, and in 1991, she was awarded the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching.

President Hirsh is an internationally recognized scholar of turn of the century art in Western Europe. She has served as a visiting curator at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and at the Schweizerish Institute for Kunstwissenschaft in Zurich. Over the past 12 years, Dr. Hirsh has served as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art; she has also been visiting Scholar at the University of Colorado, The Swiss Institute for Art History, and the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the author of numerous scholarly articles and exhibition catalogues. In 2004, Dr. Hirsh’s fifth book, Symbolism and Modern Urban Society, was published by Cambridge University Press.

Dr. Hirsh serves on several Boards and Committees ranging from the AICUP Committee on Research to the Honorary Board for the Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania. Currently she is chair of the Board of Directors of Southeastern Pennsylvania Consortium of Higher Education and the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Colonial States Athletic Conference. In 2013, she was honored as a Women of Distinction award recipient from the Philadelphia Business Journal.