Allison Stacey Cowles, a longtime trustee of Wellesley College who was the wife of a newspaper publisher in Spokane, Wash., and, after he died, of a former publisher of The New York Times, died Saturday night in Spokane. She was 75.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, said her son, William Stacey Cowles.

Cowles was an influential advocate for educational and conservation programs, both in New York and in Washington State. But her ties to Wellesley were particularly strong. As a student there, she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was editor of The Wellesley News in 1955, the year she graduated.

As the Wellesley president Diana Chapman Walsh noted in 1999, Cowles inhabited the world of newspaper publishing for the rest of her life. Her first husband was William H. Cowles III, whose family owns The Spokesman-Review in Spokane. He died in 1992.

Four years later, she married Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, whose family controls The Times. He was publisher of the paper and chairman and chief executive of the New York Times Company; he is currently the company’s chairman emeritus.

When Cowles left Wellesley, she was set on becoming a history professor. She received a master’s degree in history from Radcliffe College and studied for a doctorate while Cowles attended Harvard Law School.

They married in 1959, and together they moved to Spokane, where Cowles’ grandfather had bought The Spokane Review in 1893 and The Spokane Daily Chronicle in 1897, and became publisher of The Spokesman-Review and president of the Cowles Publishing Co. in 1970.

Cowles became a leader in organizations devoted to education and conservation. She helped to start a parents’ volunteer program in Spokane public schools and the Family Counseling Service of Spokane.

She was also on the board of the YMCA in Spokane and was vice chairwoman of Mount Spokane 2000, a nonprofit group that became the alpine skiing concessionaire in Spokane State Park.

Cowles was a trustee of Wellesley from 1981 to 1999 and was named a trustee emerita when she left the board. She was a member of the Washington State Council for Postsecondary Education, which made recommendations to the State Legislature on budgets and programs for public universities.

She also fought to have a branch campus of Washington State University in Spokane.

Besides Sulzberger, Cowles is survived by her son, who succeeded his father as the publisher of The Spokesman-Review; a daughter, Elizabeth A. Cowles, the chairwoman of Cowles Publishing Company; a brother, Dr. Richard Stacey; and four grandchildren, all of Spokane.