Biography | Catherine Stihler — The Younger Hall Morning That Installed the 52nd Rector

People treat a rector as a celebrity booked for one speech.

St Andrews asked Catherine Stihler to sit on Court as the students' representative.

On 30 October 2014 the university announced that she was the only validly nominated candidate.

Under the election rules that single nomination appointed her without a poll.

She became the 52nd rector in the modern line and only the second woman to hold the post.

The official installation took place on Friday 20 February 2015 in Younger Hall on North Street.

Students had taken her on the traditional drag the day before, a six-hour circuit of residences and town rooms in a pink Packard.

Principal Louise Richardson installed her in the hall.

A crowd of students sat in the stalls.

The Rector's Committee watched from the balcony.

When the party left the building a housing demonstration was already waiting at the gates.

She served until 2017.

In 2018 the university conferred an honorary Doctor of Letters for that service and for her public work.

Younger Hall is a public concert and ceremony building at the east end of North Street, postcode KY16 9AJ.

The pin is the hall, not a private lodging in town.

Photo: University buildings, geograph.org.uk 586036, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: David Iliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons