Sian Beilock was born to Ellen and Steve Beilock and grew up in a Jewish family.[5][6] Sian graduated from the University of California, San Diego in 1997 with a B.S. in cognitive science and a minor in psychology.[7] She was awarded a Ph.D. in kinesiology and psychology from Michigan State University in East Lansing in 2003.[8] Her dissertation was titled, When Performance Fails: Expertise, Attention, and Performance Under Pressure.[6] She dedicated it to her brother.[6] Her doctoral advisors were Thomas H. Carr and Deborah Feltz.[6]
Career
During her Ph.D. research and afterwards, Sian Beilock explored differences between novice and expert athletic performances. Later in her career, her research focused on why people perform poorly in stressful academic situations, such as taking a high-stakes mathematics exam. She found that worries during those situations rob individuals of the working memory or cognitive horsepower they would normally have to focus. Because people who have additional working memory rely more on their brainpower, they can be affected to a greater extent in stressful academic situations. Her work demonstrated that stressful situations during tests might diminish meaningful differences between students that under less stressful situations might exhibit greater differences in performance.[9]
Beilock's research also relates to educational practice and policy.[10] Her work found that students' attitudes and anxieties as well as those of their teachers are critical to student success.[11] In her work, she has developed simple psychological interventions to help people perform their best under stress.[12]
From 2003 to 2005, Beilock was an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She was on the faculty at the University of Chicago from 2005 until 2017, where she was the Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology and Executive Vice Provost.[5] On July 1, 2017, she became the 8th president of Barnard College, a position she held until June 2023.[13][14]
Dartmouth College president
Beilock became the first woman to lead Dartmouth College, beginning her tenure as president on June 12, 2023.[15][16][17] She said that her focus is on improving student mental health and fostering free speech and open dialogue on campus.[18] In October 2023, she launched “Commitment to Care: Dartmouth’s Plan for Student Mental Health and Well-Being,” and later hired the institution’s inaugural chief health and wellness officer to oversee campus health and well-being for students, faculty and staff.[19] Beilock also convened a panel hosted by CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta featuring U.S. Surgeon GeneralVivek Murthy and all of his living predecessors to discuss the nation’s mental health crisis on September 28, 2023.[20][21]
In 2023, Beilock introduced a time away policy geared toward students who need to take a leave of absence during their studies.[22]
In February 2024, Beilock reinstated the SAT/ACT requirement for Dartmouth undergraduate admissions, becoming the first Ivy League president to do so following a trend of test-optional policies adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic.[23][24] In a message to the Dartmouth community, she wrote that “the decision was guided by social science research that suggests we can improve our ability to identify students from a wide range of economic backgrounds who will succeed at Dartmouth.”[25]
In April 2024, she announced the creation of the Dartmouth Climate Collaboration, pledging $500 million towards the goal of eliminating carbon emissions on campus by 2050. The plan includes the installation of high-capacity heat pumps and a geoexchange system.[26][27]
In October 2024, Beilock pledged that she would add 1,000 housing units for students, faculty and staff to campus within 10 years. The initiative kicked off with a $30 million donation from two alumni.[28][29]
Palestinian protests
Several incidents, including the October arrests of two student protestors and free-speech concerns around monitoring of student communications, occurred early in her tenure.[30][31] After a series of forums by Jewish Studies and Middle Eastern Studies faculty, the college launched Dartmouth Dialogues in January 2024 to model productive conversations on divisive issues; build skills around empathetic listening, emotional management and conversation navigation; and encourage connection among students, faculty and staff members.[32][33]
In May 2024, approximately 90 students, faculty and community members who were protesting the Israel-Hamas War were taken into custody by the New Hampshire State Police.[34][35][36] Two student journalists reporting on the protest were among the arrested. A week later, Beilock stood by her decision "to ask the Hanover Police Department for help taking down the encampment" but noted she was "sorry for the harm this impossible decision has caused."[37] On May 15, 2024, Dartmouth's undergraduate student body voted no confidence in Beilock.[38] On May 20, 2024, Beilock was censured by a vote of 183 to 163 by the Dartmouth Faculty of Arts and Sciences over her response to the May 1 campus protest. This marked the first time a Dartmouth president was ever censured.[39][40] Following the arrests, the New York Times described Dartmouth as having "stood out for its almost instantaneous response to a nonviolent protest."[36]
Dartmouth is the only Ivy League college which has not faced a federal civil rights investigation over its handling of allegations of antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus.[41]
Beilock, S. L. (2010). Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal about Getting It Right When You Have To. Simon & Schuster: Free Press.
Beilock, S. L. (2015). How the Body Knows Its Mind: The Surprising Power of the Physical Environment to Influence How You Think and Feel. Simon & Schuster: Atria Books.
^ abcdBeilock, Sian Leah (2003). When Performance Fails: Expertise, Attention, and Performance Under Pressure (Ph.D. thesis). Michigan State University. doi:10.25335/kswv-gr45. OCLC52627169.
^"Sian Leah Beilock". President | Dartmouth College. April 20, 2023. Retrieved June 12, 2023.
^Beilock, Sian (October 17, 2023). "State of the College address". Dartmouth College Office of the President. Trustees of Dartmouth College. Retrieved May 7, 2024.
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