After a four-month national search, St. Mary’s College of Maryland has found its new president.

Rhonda Phillips, the current president of Chatham University in Pittsburgh, will helm St. Mary’s, a public liberal arts college in Southern Maryland, starting July 1.

“Her passion for the public liberal arts, distinguished service building honors programs, and hands-on approach to leadership are but a few of the qualities that made her the clear choice for this moment,” said John Bell, chair of the St. Mary’s Board of Trustees.

While president of Chatham, Phillips restructured the university to achieve long-term financial stability. She also reduced the budget deficit at the Pittsburgh university, which has an endowment of about $90 million.

Her experience navigating tight budgets could be helpful at St. Mary’s, which has an endowment of just under $40 million.

Moody’s Investors Service, a leading global provider of credit ratings and risk analyses, lowered the outlook on St. Mary’s from stable to negative in 2024, according to the college’s financial statements. Last fiscal year, the college spent more than it brought in, though it ended the year in a net positive because of a 2020 revenue bond.

Before she moved to Pittsburgh, Phillips was the inaugural dean of the honors college at Purdue University and associate dean of the honors college at Arizona State University.

She also made history as the first woman to earn a doctoral degree in city and regional planning from Georgia Tech University.

Phillips will succeed Tuajuanda Jordan, who will retire at the end of June after 11 years at St. Mary’s. Jordan’s tenure is marked by the construction of four major campus facilities, a tuition reduction and the creation of the Commemorative to Enslaved Peoples of Southern Maryland.

Though St. Mary’s is a public college, it is not part of the University System of Maryland. The 1,600-student college calls itself a national public honors college. It was designated by the Maryland legislature in 1992 to serve as the state’s public honors college, and in 2018 St. Mary’s added the “national” as a self-designation to help with marketing.

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