President, Lafayette College
Nicole Farmer Hurd, a visionary leader in higher education, is Lafayette College’s 18th president. Founder and former CEO of the College Advising Corps, Hurd joined Lafayette in July 2021 and in 2025 received a unanimous trustee extension through June 2030.
Hurd is leading the implementation of a campus master plan and strategic plan to strengthen Lafayette’s excellence and impact. Together, these initiatives guide the College’s priorities from celebrating its bicentennial history to setting the course for its third century.
Under her leadership, applications have increased 32 percent since fall 2021, reaching a record 10,909 for the fall 2026 class—the largest applicant pool in institution history. Championing access, Lafayette became the first liberal arts institution to waive complex financial aid forms for students from high-poverty schools and raised the family-income threshold for its no-loan policy to $200,000.
Hurd has also spearheaded historic philanthropic advances. Early in her tenure, she secured $5 million to create 1,000 new student opportunities in internships, study abroad, and research. She has raised over $10 million for the strategic plan, funding professorships and programming across three key initiatives: Democracy and its Technologies, From the Lehigh Valley to the Globe, and Interdisciplinarity, Engineering, and the Liberal Arts.
A tireless advocate for increasing student opportunity, Hurd was named a 2016 White House Champion of Change for College Opportunity. She has been recognized as a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Featured Innovator, a Time Magazine changemaker, and one of Washington Monthly’s most innovative higher education leaders.
From 2002 to 2007, Hurd served as Assistant Dean and founding Director of the Center for Undergraduate Excellence at the University of Virginia, founding the College Guide Program (precursor to the College Advising Corps) and mentoring successful Rhodes, Marshall, Mitchell, Fulbright, and Truman scholar candidates.
Hurd holds a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame, an M.A. from Georgetown University, and a Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of Virginia. She also received an honorary doctorate from Franklin & Marshall College.
She and her husband, Bill, have two children, Monica and Matthew, and two dogs, Sadie and Saylor.
