The American Academy of Arts & Sciences have been honoring excellence for the past 240 years by annually electing new, accomplished members. Individuals who have faced the nation’s greatest challenges are eligible for recognition. This year, 270 members from 23 different countries have been selected to join the academy.
We are proud to recognize Academic Leadership Institute (ALI) faculty, Reginald DesRoches, Mariko Silver, and Felix Matos Rodríguez, as new members elected in 2023.
ALI’s mission is to increase the representation of rising leaders committed to issues of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), including faculty of color. The program will help colleagues on the path to becoming future presidents and provosts and utilize the small network of current and former presidents and provosts who have demonstrated leadership in DEI principles, to provide a forum for more intentional and scalable mentoring of the next generation of such leaders. ALI’s faculty is comprised of proven leaders that can speak to core principles of leadership in higher education.
These ALI faculty members have taught curriculum and provided mentorship for members of ALI’s Residential Program. The program fosters leadership in higher education, while instilling diversity, equity, access, and inclusion as foundational values.
Reginald DesRoches
Rice University
Reginald DesRoches is Rice University’s eighth president. He also serves as a professor of civil and environmental engineering, and professor of mechanical engineering. As president, DesRoches serves as the chief executive officer of the university and its 7,500 students, eight schools and more than 700 faculty. He previously served as Rice’s Howard Hughes Provost and William and Stephanie Sick Dean of Engineering.
DesRoches’ top priorities are to enable Rice to reach a new level of distinction nationally and internationally for impactful research, award-winning scholarship and insightful creative work. He also wants to build graduate programs that are of the same distinction as Rice’s top rated undergraduate programs while maintaining Rice’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Before his appointment at Rice, DesRoches served as chair of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. As chair, he led a major renovation of the school’s main research and teaching home, and he spearheaded a major fundraising effort for the school that doubled the number of endowed chairs and professors. During his tenure as chair, the school dramatically moved up in the U.S News & World Report graduate rankings, achieving a ranking of No. 2 in the nation — the highest in the history of the school.
Mariko Silver
Henry Luce Foundation
Dr. Mariko Silver is currently president and CEO of the Henry Luce Foundation.
Previously, Dr. Silver served as President of Bennington College where she is responsible for all dimensions of life at the college and has become a recognized thought leader for her writings on experiential learning, the future of work, institutional innovation, and diversity in leadership. In her time at Bennington, Silver spearheaded the development of a 10-year strategic plan; forged lasting partnerships with some of the world’s premier arts and cultural institutions; oversaw a revitalization of the campus, including the iconic Commons building; quadrupled commitments to the endowment since 2013; and guided the establishment of the largest capital campaign in the school’s history, raising over $90 million.
Dr. Silver previously served in the Obama Administration as Acting Assistant Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Policy for the United States Department of Homeland Security. Prior to that, she served as Policy Advisor for Economic Development, Innovation, and Education in the administration of Arizona’s governor Janet Napolitano. During nearly a decade at Arizona State University, Dr. Silver was a lead developer and key strategist in what Newsweek called “one of the most radical redesigns in higher learning since the origins of the modern university.”
Felix Matos Rodríguez
The City University of New York
Félix V. Matos Rodríguez is the eighth Chancellor of The City University of New York (CUNY), and the first educator of color and the first Latino to lead the nation’s largest urban public university, which serves 243,000 degree-seeking students across 25 New York City campuses. He was appointed in 2019, shifting the system to remote learning during the pandemic while working to secure partnerships and increase programs that will allow CUNY to help drive New York’s recovery. To continue CUNY’s unrivaled role as an engine of economic mobility, Chancellor Matos Rodríguez has focused on removing barriers to students’ success. He erased more than $100 million in unpaid tuition and fees for over 57,000 students, ended the practice of holding transcripts of students with outstanding balances and has developed career pipelines for students through a series of public-private partnerships with some of New York’s largest employers. A historian, he has served the University for two decades as faculty at Hunter College, and as president of Hostos Community College and Queens College.
