BOSTON (AP) – Simmons College appointed public health scholar Susan Scrimshaw as its new president on Tuesday.

Currently dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Scrimshaw will take over July 1 for Daniel S. Cheever Jr., who is retiring after more than a decade.

“Dr. Scrimshaw’s commitment to educating women as a powerful way to improve the world is a perfect match for the Simmons ethos and mission,” said Jo-Ann Robotti, a Simmons trustee and chair of the presidential search committee.

Scrimshaw’s father, Nevin Scrimshaw, established the nutrition and food sciences department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a teenager, Susan Scrimshaw lived in Newton.

Simmons has about 5,000 students in an undergraduate college for women and graduate programs for both men and women.