Pacifica Graduate Institute Announces Appointment of Loralee M. Scott as Interim Provost
Pacifica Graduate Institute is pleased to announce the appointment of Loralee M. Scott, MFA, as Interim Provost. At the academic leadership level, Dr. Thyonne Gordon continues to serve as President and CAO of record, maintaining ultimate responsibility for academic and institutional alignment. Within this structure, Interim Provost Loralee M. Scott provides integrative leadership across the Institute’s academic enterprise, advancing coordination across graduate programs, student experience, accreditation, and strategic academic initiatives. In this role, working in conjunction with the President, she will provide leadership for the Institute’s academic vision while advancing innovation across its graduate programs, scholarly initiatives, and lifelong learning offerings.
This appointment comes at a pivotal moment for the Institute as it strengthens its academic leadership structure and prepares for its upcoming accreditation cycle and leadership transition. The interim nature of the role, extending through the WSCUC 2027 visit, reflects a deliberate and strategic approach, ensuring continuity, stability, and thoughtful evaluation during a period of institutional alignment and forward planning.
Loralee Scott has been a vital member of the Pacifica community, most recently in her role as VP of Institutional Advancement and Lifelong Learning, and has played a significant role in strengthening the Institute’s intellectual life and public engagement. Through her leadership of Pacifica Extension and International Studies, she has developed innovative models of lifelong learning that connect Pacifica’s depth psychological scholarship with a broad international community of students, practitioners, and scholars. These initiatives have expanded access to Pacifica’s work while creating meaningful pathways into its graduate degree programs.
As Interim Provost, she will work closely with faculty and academic leadership to guide Pacifica’s academic strategy during a time of cultural and educational transformation. Her leadership will support the continued development of the Institute’s graduate programs while advancing new scholarly and educational initiatives that bring depth psychological insight to contemporary cultural, social, and ecological challenges.
Loralee brings to the role a distinctive background that bridges academic scholarship, creative practice, and institutional leadership. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies from Goddard College, where her graduate work integrated depth psychology, somatic practice, and performance as activism. Her scholarship is featured in the Routledge publication Grief and the Expressive Arts, and her creative work has explored the intersection of psyche, imagination, and social transformation, including projects that contributed to the development and passage of anti-trafficking legislation.
In addition to her institutional leadership, Loralee has been a featured lecturer at Jungian and depth psychological conferences internationally, including engagements in Australia, Russia, Portugal, Italy, and across the United States. Her work centers on the role of the creative unconscious as it finds expression in the arts, organizational life, and cultural imagination, offering pathways for both individual and collective transformation.
As Pacifica approaches its 50th anniversary, the Institute looks forward to the vision, creativity, and collaborative leadership that Loralee brings to this role. Her appointment reflects Pacifica’s ongoing commitment to academic excellence, depth psychological inquiry, and innovation in service of a rapidly evolving world.
Please join us in congratulating Loralee M. Scott on her appointment as Interim Provost.
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