But there’s one way in which Avery is similar to her colleagues—she has been at Harvard forever.

She received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard in psychology and social relations in 1987. In 1990 she earned a master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has been working at the College ever since, some 13 years.

Before Lewis appointed her an assistant dean in 1996, she was a freshman proctor, a senior adviser (now called assistant dean of freshmen), a Radcliffe administrative assistant and a senior admissions officer.

“It’ll be interesting to see if one day I’ll be able to cut the cord with Mother Harvard,” she muses.

Avery met her husband, Chapman, while she was an undergradauate. The couple has been together for 11 years and married for the past seven.

“He used to date my roommate,” she says of her Mather House days. “So you never know. Check out who your roommates are with.”

Harvard people and places also come up in conversation when Avery talks about her dog, King Bacchus. When she was a freshman proctor in the Yard, she acquired him through M. Suzanne Renna, now the associate director of the Bureau of Study Counsel.

She says upon returning from a trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, she sat looking at all the Bacchus-labeled paraphernalia before her and came up with the name. (The “King” part was later added at the insistence of her mother who wanted to keep the tradition of having names beginning with “K” in the family. )

A Changing Harvard

Over the years, Avery says she has seen Harvard change significantly.

For one thing, the College’s rules regarding alcohol are now stricter—proctors manned the kegs when she was a first-year, she remembers.

Many of the developments, she says, have been for the better.

And she thinks the increased awareness of and attention to women’s issues is part of that improvement.

“Those issues were very much under the table,” she says. “I think there has been a big improvement—better education, better outreach.”

Avery will return to Harvard to work on those issues a couple of days a week starting April 29 and will go back full-time June 3.