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DR. MARY SUE COLEMAN President University of Michigan |
Mary Sue Coleman has led the University of Michigan since being appointed its 13th president in August 2002.
As president, she has unveiled several major initiatives that will have an impact on future generations of students, the intellectual life of the campus, and society at large. These initiatives include the interdisciplinary richness of the U-M, student residential life, ethics in our society, the economic vitality of the state and nation, and issues related to health care.
Under her leadership, the University launched “The Michigan Difference,” a campaign to raise $2.5 billion for the future of the institution. At its conclusion in December 2008, the campaign finale stood at $3,200,733,103 – the most ever by a public university.
Dr. Coleman also has announced a groundbreaking partnership between the University and Google, which will enable the public to search the text of the University’s 7-million-volume library and will open the way to universal access and the preservation of recorded human knowledge.
President Coleman is regarded as a national spokesperson on the educational value of diverse perspectives in the classroom. Her extensive leadership positions in higher education include having served on the Association of American Universities Executive Committee, the Internet2 Board of Directors, the National Collegiate Athletic Association Board of Directors, and the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.
Elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1997, President Coleman also is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She co-chaired a major policy study of the Institute of Medicine, examining the consequences of uninsurance, and has become a nationally recognized expert on the issue.
As a biochemist, Dr. Coleman built a distinguished research career through her research on the immune system and malignancies. At the University, she holds appointments of professor of biological chemistry in the Medical School and professor of chemistry in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.
For 19 years she was a member of the biochemistry faculty at the University of Kentucky. Her work in the sciences led to administrative appointments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of New Mexico, where she served as provost and vice president for academic affairs. From 1995-2002, Dr. Coleman was president of the University of Iowa.
President Coleman is a member of the Detroit Renaissance Board of Directors; the Presidents Council, State Universities of Michigan; and the Michigan Strategic Economic Investment and Commercialization Board. She is a trustee of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Gerald R. Ford Foundation. She serves on the boards of directors of Johnson & Johnson and the Meredith Corporation.
She earned her undergraduate degree in chemistry from Grinnell College and her doctorate in biochemistry from the University of North Carolina. She holds honorary doctorates from Grinnell College, Luther College, the University of Kentucky, Albion College, Dartmouth College, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Northeastern University, the University of Toledo, and the University of Notre Dame. She is the recipient of a distinguished alumnus award from the University of North Carolina. The Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion has honored her as Humanitarian of the Year.
President Coleman and her husband, Dr. Kenneth Coleman, a political scientist specializing in Latin America, live in the historic President’s House on the University campus. Their son, Jonathan, is a portfolio manager in Denver, Colo.
Research universities can be major hubs for entrepreneurial activity and technology innovation, but this environment is not inherent.
Our economic survival as a region and nation is dependent upon a willingness to embrace untested ideas and inventions, encourage risk-taking, and acknowledge failure as simply part of the creative process. Research universities, particularly those in the Midwest, have the opportunity to deliver a profound impact upon tomorrow’s knowledge-driven industries: advanced manufacturing, alternative energy, health care delivery, and drug development.
Scholarship and generating new knowledge will always be the foundation of research universities. That must include teaching and nurturing entrepreneurs, be they faculty, staff or students. We do this through coursework, incubator space, student-driven organizations, technology transfer initiatives, and supportive leadership.
Equally important, our job is to convince those holdouts within the academy that “entrepreneurism” is not a dirty word.
When an English professor writes a novel or a collection of poetry, and that work is rewarded with a Pulitzer Prize or the National Book Critics Circle Award, we in higher education celebrate the achievement. When a bioengineering professor develops a medical device with the potential to improve lives, or a scientist licenses a software innovation to industry, we should be just as effusive with our institutional praise and rewards. It should not be viewed as sacrilege, as it sometimes is from wary corners of campus, for entrepreneurial faculty and students to commercialize their work.
Research universities have long been engines of technology and innovation in America. We have shaped the Internet, created the artificial heart and the integrated circuit chip, and developed vaccines to prevent polio and cervical cancer. Now more than ever, we must embolden the academy to provide a thriving culture for entrepreneurs in our community who are determined to make a difference with their innovation and invention.
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