Pauline "Polly" Tompkins (March 5, 1918 – November 19, 2004[1]) was the first female president of Cedar Crest College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in the United States.

[3] Tompkins was general director of the American Association of University Women from 1959 to 1967.

[2][4][5] She was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the nine-member United States Advisory Commission on International Education and Cultural Affairs in 1964.

[6] She was chairman of the board of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching from 1974 to 1976.

[2] Tompkins died in 2004 in Edgecomb, Maine, aged 86 years.