Mary K. Grant is an American educator and current chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Asheville. She was previously president of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams.

Born in Boston, Grant was raised in Weymouth, Massachusetts. She is one of six children and the first in her family to complete a four-year degree. She graduated from North Adams State College (now the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts) in 1983, earning a bachelor’s degree in sociology. Grant earned a master’s degree in public affairs from University of Massachusetts Boston and a Pd.D in social policy from Brandeis University.

Before beginning a career in higher education, she worked as a social worker in a housing project in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Grant then worked as a research associate at the University of Massachusetts Boston in 1990 and taught graduate level courses over the course of the next decade. She served as director of the Center for Social Policy and as assistant vice chancellor for administration.

From 2000 to 2002, Grant was employed as the deputy chief executive officer and chief academic officer of UMassOnline, a system-wide program delivering professional and online education.

Grant served as the president of MCLA from 2002 to 2014. She is the first alumna of MCLA to serve as president. MCLA is the designated public liberal arts college of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. During her tenure, Grant is credited with increasing enrolment, improving campus facilities, and made community involvement a key priority.

Grant was elected the seventh chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Asheville in 2014. She was selected from a field of 119 applicants and began leadership of the college on January 5, 2015. She was officially installed on September 19, 2015 in a ceremony on UNC Asheville’s campus. UNC Asheville is the designated liberal arts institution for the University of North Carolina system with an enrollment of 3,700 students.

UNC Asheville campus

Sources used in this article: New Chancellor Gets to Know Students, UNCA, from Asheville Citizen-Times; New Chancellor Announced for UNCA, from Asheville Citizen-Times. Photo of campus is courtesy of the University of North Carolina at Asheville.