WELLESLEY--Wellesley College chose on Tuesday Nannerl Koehane, an associate professor of political science at Stanford University, for its 11th president, university officials announced.

Koehane will take the post next fall from Barbara Newell, who is leaving Wellesley to become U.S. representative to the United Nations' Economic, Social, and Cultural Organization.

"She's concerned about the lifestyle of intellectual women who are training to be leaders of the nation," Betty Johnson, vice chairman of Wellesley's Board of Trustees said yesterday, adding that Koehane has "tremendous intellectual distinction behind and ahead of her."

After graduating from Wellesley in 1961, Koehane attended Oxford University, and received a doctorate in political science at Yale University in 1967.

Koehane has taught at Swarthmore College, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford Unversity, where she received the Gores Award for excellence in instruction.

She is the author of "Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment."