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2Williams moved to New York State in 1968 after earning a bachelor's degree in psychology (she still maintains dual citizenship in the United States and Canada) and was soon employed as a caseworker with the Monroe County Department of Social Services. Her decision to go into social work was as much a product of the times as anything else. "It was the '60s," she says, "and there was a tremendous interest in social issues and promoting the social agenda. I was aware of and interested in that." It was during her time in Rochester that Peggy Ryan, on a blind date set up by a coworker, met David Williams, a Rochester native who had just returned home after law school. The matchmakers saw that Ryan and Williams shared many interests. "Basically they said that each of us went somewhere or did something interesting every weekend," says Williams. "They figured we might as well do those things together." The couple married soon after and lived in Rochester until 1972, when he was offered a job at a Vermont law firm and she accepted a position as a medical social worker with the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont. It wasn't long, however, before Williams felt the need for change. "I continued in social work, but I had begun feeling a bit unsettled, that perhaps my skills might be better used elsewhere." In 1973 she applied for and was appointed to a position as an academic adviser at the Community College of Vermont. "I think the only job I ever got in direct response to a newspaper ad was my first job in higher education," Williams says. "I didn't have a clue about this organization, and I had no experience in education, but I figured, 'Well, I've been an adviser of sorts, in terms of helping people with the multiplicity of issues in their lives.' So, basically I made the case in the interview that I would be capable of translating the skills I had in one area to another, and that was the bridge. And once I got into it I just decided it was fascinating." |
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So fascinating, in fact, that Williams went back to school herself. By 1976 she had earned a master's degree in education from the University of Vermont. She served as regional director for the Community College of Vermont from 1976 to 1982, spent the summer of 1981 as assistant to the president of Johnson State College in Johnson, Vermont, and served from 1982 to 1985 as director of educational and personnel services at the chancellor's office of the Vermont state college system. She was working as associate academic dean and was an associate professor at Trinity College in Burlington, Vermont, when she was named president of Lyndon State College in Lyndonville, Vermont, in 1989. To Williams, the move from social work to higher education seemed a natural one. "It was a very conscious decision to get into another realm of the helping professions," she says. "I went back to school to learn more about the field. I remember that during master's degree orals a professor asked when I was going to go for my doctorate, and I almost flung a pencil at him. Actually, it was only two years after that that I was applying. [She earned her doctorate in 1983 at Harvard University after commuting back and forth to her full-time job in Vermont for two years.] Sometimes others know us better than we know ourselves. That was the nudge." |
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