Katharine C. Lyall was the fifth president of the University of Wisconsin System and its first woman president. The UW System has 26 campuses and serves 160,000 students. Prior to her appointment as president in 1992, she served as Vice President for Academic Affairs and as Executive Vice president of the UW System, and earlier as director of the Graduate Program in Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University.
She has held faculty appointments at Syracuse University, Cornell, and Johns Hopkins, and currently is Professor of Economics at UW-Madison where she finds time to teach freshman micro-theory. During the Carter Administration, Dr. Lyall served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Currently, she serves on the board of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the nation's oldest organization supporting teachers and excellence in teaching.
Dr. Lyall retired from the UW system presidency in September 2004.
