Christopher Ames is the tenth president of Russell Sage College. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Ames earned a Ph.D. in English Literature at Stanford University. He taught twentieth-century literature and film for fifteen years at Agnes Scott College, a liberal arts college for women in Atlanta. He has published two books: The Life of the Party: Festive Vision in Modern Fiction and Movies About Movies: Hollywood Reflected. Ames served as Provost and Senior Vice President at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta and as Provost and Dean of the College at Washington College on the eastern shore of Maryland. 

Before coming to Sage, he was Provost at Shepherd University, the public liberal arts university of West Virginia, located in Shepherdstown, just outside of the metropolitan D.C. area. He is a graduate of Harvard’s Institute of Educational Management and the Aspen Institute Executive Seminar on Leadership.