MCAD Leadership

Meet MCAD's President:

Gwendolyn Freed

Gwendolyn Freed, Ph.D., is the twentieth President of Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Dr. Freed has spent her career in higher education, arts, and nonprofit leadership. Previous higher education roles have included Vice President of Institutional Advancement at Cornish College of the Arts, Vice President for Marketing and Communication at Gustavus Adolphus College, and Executive Director of Wallin Education Partners, a college scholarship organization. She served for two years as Interim Director of the University of Minnesota (UMN) School of Music. Dr. Freed is a past graduate instructor at the University of Washington College of Education, and she currently teaches in the UMN graduate program in Arts and Cultural Leadership, as well as at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. She holds a Ph.D. in Educational Policy and Administration from the UMN, and she is an alumna of the Harvard Institute for Educational Management. Dr. Freed’s primary research interests are organizational identity and external relations in higher education. Her work has appeared in the Handbook of Higher Education Theory and Research, Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Trusteeship magazine. Early in her career, Dr. Freed was an arts journalist at outlets including the Wall Street Journal and Star Tribune. In recognition of her contributions to the field, she was awarded a National Arts Journalism Program fellowship at Columbia University. An oboist and English horn player, she holds music degrees from The Juilliard School and Oberlin Conservatory of Music.