Bio

Ann Batchelder earned her doctorate in Education from Boston University in 1976 before joining Wellesley College’s faculty. Ann was the first sport-specific faculty member hired at Wellesley when she was hired to teach squash in 1979. At the time, she was one of the top-five nationally ranked players in the nation and the top-ranked player in Massachusetts.

Appointed permanent Associate Chair of the Physical Education, Recreation, Athletics (PERA) Department in the 1980's, Batchelder became Professor Emerita in 2008 and was awarded the Wellesley Community Service Award in 1996 and the Friend of Athletics Linda K. Vaughan Exceptional Service Award in 2015. She continues to be actively involved with the department today, lending her support to the annual Ann S. Batchelder Golf Invitational.

I was, and am, Wellesley born and bred, growing up about one block from the Nehoiden Golf Course. After spending my teenage years in Pennsylvania and a six-year stint teaching history in high school, I was offered a one-year appointment at Wellesley College to build the Squash program and to teach various racket sports. I quickly snapped up the offer, and realized immediately that I never wanted to leave. This was in 1970, several years before Title IX became law and in the beginning years of women’s intercollegiate athletics, so there were very few college programs for women.

I was both a teacher and coach for my squash students, since none of them had held a racquet before coming to Wellesley. While we competed against a few college programs, we also competed as a team made up of students and faculty in the Massachusetts Women’s A League, winning the State Team Championship one year. 

I worked hard not only to improve physical skills but also to incorporate tactics and strategy in their games. A young alum wrote me about a year after she graduated saying she had had no problem presenting a project in front of her company’s board because “she had learned to think quickly and critically on the squash court at Wellesley.”

As in coaching, I incorporated learning physical and mental skills into all my teaching, adding a little knowledge about physics, history, kinesiology and sociology whenever I could. Starting with classes in the racquet sports, I moved on to golf after an older colleague retired. In all my teaching, an internal core principle for me was that a student was never doing a skill badly, but had simply not learned to do it right yet, placing the responsibility of learning back on me. A comment from a student on an evaluation, written with typical Wellesley clarity, simply said: “Ann would have taught the turtle to run.”

I also used my dual passions for teaching and my several golden retrievers to make more than 10,000 daily visits to local nursing homes over the past quarter century. I taught my therapy dog and a resident who was physically unable to speak hand signals so the two could communicate, with high fives and waves becoming the norm. The resident, who had been shunned by others because of her vocal disability, became the center of attention as soon as Deucie entered the room and placed her head in the resident’s lap.

I was so fortunate to become part of the Wellesley College Community, pursuing my passions for sports and teaching and coaching, and being paid to do so! To be recognized by induction into the Wellesley College Athletic Hall of Fame is the capstone of my career, and I am ever so grateful to the Selection Committee and everyone who made this extraordinary honor possible.