Gregory S. Woodward is the University of Hartford’s sixth president. In his nearly two-year tenure, he has energized the University community to embrace his commitment to help every student succeed and to know more about who they are—and how they interface with our diverse world—when they walk across the stage with their diploma. 

A composer, musician, athlete, and scholar, Woodward has spent nearly four decades working in almost every conceivable role in higher education. From 2012 to the end of the 2016–17 academic year, he served as president of Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he strengthened campus-wide engagement and collaboration, thereby fostering a college culture that values collegiality and a spirit of hospitality toward others. 

Woodward moved to Carthage from Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York, where he led one of the premier undergraduate music conservatories in the country as dean of the School of Music, served as interim provost/vice president for academic affairs, and created and served as the inaugural dean of the Division of Graduate and Professional Studies. 

He joined Ithaca’s Department of Music Theory, History, and Composition as a composer in 1984, becoming a full professor in 2000. While earning his Doctor of Musical Arts from Cornell University, Woodward was a student of Pulitzer Prize-winning Czechoslovakian composer Karel Husa. Woodward earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Connecticut and master’s degree from Ithaca College, having also studied composition with Donald Martino, Steven Stucky, and Charles Whittenberg. 

Woodward was a fellow in higher education at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education and is a graduate of Harvard’s New President Institute. He previously served on the music faculty at Cornell and at Valparaiso University and was an ongoing guest lecturer in the School of Music at Yale University. 

He is married to Penelope, a decorated public school music teacher, and they have three adult children.