Thomas Stephenson

Provost，Swarthmore College

Thomas Stephenson is the Provost and the James Hammons Professor of Chemistry at Swarthmore College.  As Provost, he is the chief academic officer at Swarthmore, one of the top-ranked and most selective residential liberal arts colleges in the world. Founded in 1864 by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), Swarthmore today is non-sectarian and offers bachelor of arts and bachelor of science degrees in over 35 majors in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering.

Prior to becoming Provost in 2011, Professor Stephenson served as Associate Provost for Information Technology and as Chair of the Department of Chemistry. He joined the faculty at Swarthmore in 1985. As a chemist, his research on the dynamics of weakly bound "van der Waals" complexes and collision-induced energy transfer has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Petroleum Research Fund of the American Chemical Society and the Research Corporation. He is the recipient of a Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and has held visiting faculty positions at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago. Professor Stephenson is a graduate of Furman University and the University of Chicago.