St. Catherine University in St. Paul on Wednesday tapped a veteran college administrator as its new president.

Marcheta P. Evans. (Courtesy of St. Caherine University.)

Marcheta P. Evans, who currently serves as chancellor at Bloomfield College of Montclair State University in New Jersey, will be the first Black woman to lead St. Kate’s in its 119-year history, according to a Wednesday announcement.

Evans will begin her tenure as the 12th president of the private Catholic women’s liberal arts school on July 15.

St. Catherine’s current president, Becky Roloff, announced last year that she planned to retire in August.

St. Catherine trustees Ken Charles and Anne Gotte, who co-chaired the Highland Park university’s presidential search committee, said in the announcement that Evans “clearly demonstrated her ethical decision-making process, rooted in values and principles consistent with our University’s mission, vision and values, which made her selection a logical choice.”

“Dr. Evans’s astute understanding of higher education trends, particularly as they relate to smaller, private institutions, and her track record of developing and activating growth and transformation strategies, impressed the entire committee,” Charles and Gott said.

In New Jersey, Evans oversaw the 2023 merger of Bloomfield College — a private minority-serving institution that faced financial struggles — with the much larger public Montclair State University.

Two years after taking over as president of Bloomfield, Evans announced in 2021 that the 153-year-old institution would shut down if it could not secure a financial lifeline from a donor or another university, citing a decade of declining enrollment and several years of budget deficits.

The merger with Montclair State allowed Bloomfield to continue operating.

Prior to her post at Bloomfield, Evans spent two decades in administrative roles at public and private institutions, including as provost and vice president for academic affairs at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, and as associate dean and department chair at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Evans holds a doctorate in counselor education and supervision from the University of Alabama.

Roloff has been the president of St. Kate’s since 2016. A 1976 St. Kate’s graduate and former head of the board of trustees, she assumed the presidency after leaving her job as CEO of the YWCA Minneapolis.

Related Articles

Prosecutors: St. Paul officer’s fatal shooting of man, 65, was legally justified

Mother of 23-year-old fatally shot in St. Paul: ‘There will be justice for Devon’

St. Paul man pleads guilty to stabbing wife to death during Bible study

St. Paul Public Schools approves $37.5M in teacher pay increases, but budget cuts loom

Choo Choo Bob’s Train Store returning to St. Paul, with a new home in Union Depot