Born in northeast Italy, Dr. Lovett received her undergraduate education in
English and German at the University of Trieste and at Cambridge University in
England. She came to the United States in 1962, earning master's and doctoral
degrees in history at the University of Texas, Austin.
During her twenty-five years in higher education, she has served as professor of history at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, chief of the European Division of the Library of Congress, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at George Washington University, and provost and vice president for Academic Affairs at George Mason University.
Dr. Lovett is widely published. Her accomplishments as a scholar have been recognized through fellowships and grants from organizations, such as the Guggenheim Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her extensive record of public service includes work with the Foreign Service Institute, the U.S. Information Agency, the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars, the American Historical Association, the Association of American Colleges, numerous corporate boards in the fields of banking and technology, and other agencies.
Dr. Lovett's awards and honors are many. In 1989, she was named by Washingtonian magazine as one of the "100 Most Powerful Women" in Washington, and in 1992 the Virginia Federation of Business and Professional Women selected her as Educator of the Year. In 1993, the American Association for Higher Education invited her to head a national project on faculty work.
On October 15, 1993, Dr. Lovett accepted the presidency at Northern Arizona University, becoming the first woman to hold the top post at one of the three Arizona state universities. Since her arrival at NAU, she has improved campus communication through such initiatives as a university-wide dialogue--under the auspices of the Pew Higher Education Roundtable--about the future of the university. She has also reworked, with input from faculty and staff, the institution's mission statement and goals, encouraged innovative thinking in preparation for the twenty-first century, and generated increased support from the Arizona Legislature.
Dr. Lovett is married to Dr. Benjamin F. Brown, a retired professor of history and senior intelligence officer with the CIA.