Donna Heiland

Donna Heiland was named Provost at Pratt Institute in July 2021. Prior to this, she served as Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at Pratt for over four years. Before arriving at Pratt, Donna served as Vice President and Special Assistant to the President at Emerson College. At Emerson, she provided leadership for strategic planning, represented the office of the President at Emerson and beyond, worked with the Board of Overseers and the Board of Trustees, and with senior administrators and faculty on projects that aligned with the President’s strategic priorities.

Donna served for eight years as Vice President of the Teagle Foundation, which is nationally known for its programs to strengthen student learning, especially in the arts and sciences. She has also served as Director of Fellowship Programs at the American Council of Learned Societies, and earned tenure in the English Department at Vassar College, where she was on the faculty for nearly twelve years.

Over the course of her career, Donna has given many invited talks, conference papers, and other presentation on literature and on topics in higher education. Her publications include Literary Study, Measurement, and the Sublime: Disciplinary Assessment, which she co-edited with Laura J. Rosenthal, and the assistance of Cheryl Ching (Teagle Foundation, 2011) andGothic and Gender: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2004). She earned her PhD in English from Yale University, focusing especially on 18th century British literature, and her BA from the University of Western Ontario.