Susan Henking

Susan Henking
Susan Henking at Shimer College in 2012.
14th President of Shimer College
Incumbent
Assumed office 2012
Preceded by	Ed Noonan
Personal details
Alma mater	University of Chicago Divinity School; Duke University

Susan E. Henking is a scholar of religious studies and the 14th president of Shimer College in Chicago. She was appointed to this position in July 2012.

Henking is the first female president of this small Great Books college since its 19th-century founder, Frances Shimer, ceded control to the University of Chicago in 1896. Henking is one of the small number of openly lesbian college presidents. In an interview with Chicago's Windy City Times, Henking said of Shimer, "I have never been in a place that is more welcoming; it's amazingly welcoming on the LGBT front."

Henking blogs frequently on higher education and other topics on the Huffington Post and also ChicagoNow. In the past she was also a regular contributor to Religion Dispatches, an online magazine of religion, politics and culture.

By recognizing that the phrase “I am a leader. I am also a woman” is both aspirational and descriptive, we women leaders remember both our success in navigating the politics of academe and our continuing need to challenge the status quo.

Susan Henking received her BA from Duke University in 1977 and her MA from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 1979. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 1988, and began teaching at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in 1988. Her doctoral dissertation was titled “Protestant Religious Experience and the Rise of American Sociology: A Contextual Study of Varieties of Secularization”.

Henking taught at Hobart and William Smith Colleges for more than 20 years, principally in the field of religious studies. She also taught in Women's Studies. In 1992 she received the Faculty Distinguished Teaching Award. She was the founding editor of the "Teaching Religious Studies" series from the American Academy of Religion.