The Bowdoin College Board of Trustees elected Michele Cyr ’76, P’12 to serve a three-year term as chair, to begin July 1, during meetings held February 4-6, 2016, in Boston.
Cyr, associate dean for academic affairs for the division of biology and medicine, as well as professor of medicine and medical science, at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School, succeeds Deborah Jensen Barker ’80, P’16, who will remain on the board and continue as chair through June 30, 2016.
As associate dean, Cyr oversees the Offices of Biomedical Faculty Administration, Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, Women in Medicine and Science and Graduate Medical Education.
She chairs Brown’s Title IX Oversight and Advisory Board and co-chaired the University’s Sexual Assault Task Force focusing on campus sexual violence and gender-based harassment.
Cyr has received many awards for teaching and medicine, including the Outstanding Faculty Mentor award from the Brown University/Women & Infants Hospital National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health. She has published dozens of articles, chapters, and books, including coauthoring The New Truth about Menopause: Straight Talk about Treatment Choices from Two Leading Women Doctors, called “the Bible of menopause” by American Health.
An art and biochemistry double major, Cyr graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa and went on to Dartmouth Medical School, graduating with honors in 1979, before returning to Maine to conduct her internship and residency at Maine Medical Center in Portland.
Cyr was elected to the Board of Trustees in 2000. During her tenure on the Board she has served on the Executive Committee; as vice chair of the Board of Trustees; and chair of the Committee on Trustees and the Academic Affairs Committee.
She has also served as a member of the Facilities and Properties Committee, Admissions and Financial Aid Committee, Special Committee on Multicultural Affairs, Museum of Art Executive Advisory Council, Subcommittee on Honors, and Presidential Search Committee.
She is in her first year of service on the Information Technology Committee and has also served as liaison to the President’s Visiting Committee.
In addition to her Board of Trustees work, Cyr has served as a BCAN advisor, a BASIC representative and as a member of the Reunion Gift and Leadership Gift Committees for her class.
In 1997 Cyr received Bowdoin’s Distinguished Educator Award.
Cyr lives in Barrington, Rhode Island, with her husband, Gregory Towne, M.D.
