Christ became the 10th president of Smith College in 2002. At Smith, Christ led an energetic and wide-ranging strategic planning process to identify the distinctive intellectual traditions of the Smith curriculum and foster initiatives to further develop students’ essential capacities. Throughout her administrative career, Christ has maintained an active program of teaching and research. She has published two books: "The Finer Optic: The Aesthetic of Particularity in Victorian Poetry" and "Victorian and Modern Poetics". She also edited a Norton Critical Edition of George Eliot’s "The Mill on the Floss" and co-edited the "Norton Anthology of English Literature and Victorian Literature" and "The Victorian Visual Imagination". Until recently, she was professor of English at Smith, offering seminars on science and literature and on the arts.