Monica Inzer

2024 Distinguished Service Award
Citation for Monica Inzer

As the first in your family to attend college, you experienced firsthand the power of a liberal arts education to change lives. And years later, as dean of admission and financial aid and then vice president for enrollment at Hamilton, you did everything in your power to ensure other qualified students had the opportunity you did, no matter their background or their family’s financial circumstances.

You came to Hamilton in 2004 to work with Joan Hinde Stewart, a kindred spirit who, like you, was a first-generation college student. Together, the two of you worked to preserve Hamilton’s well-earned reputation as a school of opportunity by ensuring the College on the Hill remained accessible, affordable, and equitable to all students who met its rigorous standards.

In 2007, you led the effort to eliminate merit-based aid at Hamilton because, you said, “Having scholarships for the most qualified candidates who needed financial aid was more important than offering money to those who didn’t.”

But that was only the first step.

The proudest moment in your professional career came in 2010, when Hamilton’s trustees voted to become need-blind in admission. “It just didn’t feel good to have to make admissions decisions based on students’ ability to pay,” you said. It was a fitting stance to take for a college named after a statesman whose own college education was made possible through the beneficence of others.

Since those days, in addition to leading an Admission and Financial Aid Office that repeatedly set records for applications, selectivity, yield, diversity, and the academic profile of each entering class, you spent considerable time helping to raise the funds needed to sustain the College’s need-blind promise. You also took a further step to demonstrate the College’s commitment to equity by establishing the Student Emergency Aid Society, a program that supports one-time exceptional needs for students who face extraordinary financial barriers.

Your 20-year career on College Hill was marked by a simple but powerful belief: offering students acceptance to Hamilton is fundamentally about creating opportunity and the chance to change the lives of deserving students no matter their background.

For your leadership of Hamilton’s Admission and Financial Aid Office, and for putting access, affordability, and equity at the fore of our admission efforts, we honor you as the 2024 recipient of the Alumni Association’s Distinguished Service Award.

Presented by John McLaughlin
Vice President for Enrollment Management
September 26, 2024

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