Wendy Cadge ’97 is slated to become the next president of Bryn Mawr College, the school announced on Tuesday. Cadge is currently the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a professor at Brandeis University and will begin her tenure at Bryn Mawr on July 1. 

Her research focuses on contemporary American religion, especially related to public institutions, religious diversity, religious and moral aspects of healthcare, and religion and immigration. She is the author of three books, Spiritual Care: The Everyday Work of Chaplains, Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine and Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America, and a co-editor of Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care in the Twenty-First Century and Religion on the Edge: De-Centering and Re-Centering the Sociology of Religion.

Cadge was an Honors double major in religion and sociology & anthropology at Swarthmore and went on to earn a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton in 2002. Reflecting on her Honors experience as both a student and outside examiner, she wrote, "This kind of serious engagement with colleagues, faculty, and examiners has and continues to model for me the best of academic life."

At Brandeis, she worked to launch the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab (CIL) to bring chaplains, theological educators, clinical educators and social scientists into conversation about the work of chaplaincy and spiritual care. In a 2019 issue of the Bulletin, Cadge wrote about how her Swarthmore experience informed her work on religion and projects like the CIL.

"Early classes in the religion department led me to wonder about how religion matters to people, not when they are in religious organizations, but out in the world: in their daily lives. I knew nothing about academic careers when I arrived on campus and support from faculty such as Joy Charlton, Don Swearer, Ellen Ross, and Steve Hopkins, enabled me to see that that might be where my passions lie."