Board of Trustees Announces New Trinity College President, Daniel G. Lugo

Lucy Sheldon ’27

News Editor

Days before students left for winter break, the chair of Trinity College’s Board of Trustees, Lisa Bisaccia, announced   the 23rd president of Trinity College: Daniel G. Lugo. In April 2024, Trinity’s sitting president, Joanne Berger-Sweeney, announced she would be retiring. The Board of Trustees then began the search for a new president, ultimately landing on Daniel G. Lugo to be the leader and face of Trinity College.   

In 2014, Berger-Sweeney became the first Black American and the first woman to serve as president of Trinity. Throughout her tenure, she successfully implemented programs and initiatives like Summit, the Bantam Network, the Career and Life Design Center, Liberal Arts Action Lab, and Trinity Plus to expand the opportunities available at Trinity and strengthen Trinity’s relationship with the greater Hartford area. She leaves behind first-rate centers for students to study in and exceptional resources for students to use to network, gain internships, and design careers for themselves.   

While Berger-Sweeney established a high bar for the 23rd president of Trinity College to reach, Lugo’s years of experience working in academia and serving as the president of Queens University of Charlotte should equip him to follow suit. Lugo served for over five years as the 21st president of Queens University of Charlotte. Much like Berger-Sweeney’s “Summit” initiative, Lugo developed a strategic framework to establish national distinction for Queens University.  

The framework Lugo crafted to facilitate quality learning, critical thinking, and inclusivity at Queens College parallels the Summit initiative. Berger-Sweeney’s Summit initiative embraces ten objectives and three strategic goals to encourage innovation, connect Trinity with the Hartford region, and build on Trinity’s historic past. Lugo’s proposed and executed initiative at Queens College aims to create meaningful and reciprocal connections with the University and Greater Charlotte area, establish multidisciplinary academic programs that engage with some of the Global challenges and integrate areas of opportunity into the classroom, and foster diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus. Lugo recruited a new senior leadership team to carry out this initiative to improve student life and athletics. Lugo’s efforts ultimately yielded a 15% increase in net tuition revenue in his first two years serving as president, a 50% increase in undergraduate applicants and reclassified the university’s 25 NCAA sports to Division I competition.   

Beyond his work at Queens University, Lugo has served other institutions of higher learning, such as Franklin and Marshall College, Colby College and Carleton College. At Colby College, he was vice president of college advancement; at Franklin and Marshall, he was vice president and dean of admission and financial aid; and at Carleton College, he was associate dean of admissions. Most notably, while at Colby College, Lugo raised $750 million, the most extensive fundraising campaign for any liberal arts college in history.   

On Dec. 4, 2024, Daniel Lugo shared: “[As a] graduate of a strong liberal arts college, and that background taught me everything that I needed to know about having excellent critical thinking skills and communication skills. I was exposed to faculty that cared deeply me and their students, while simultaneously staying on the forefront of their fields and bringing that all applied and theoretical knowledge to the classroom.”   

Lugo also shared his goals as the new president of Trinity College, stating he wants to “build upon all of the work that has been done by President Berger-Sweeny, the incredible faculty that engage with the city of Hartford, and to ensure that we are nourishing that relationship. I believe, deeply, that my future role as president of the college is to be a true, engaged ambassador for Hartford.”