The provost of Brown University, Mark S. Schlissel, will succeed Mary Sue Coleman as president of the University of Michigan in July, the school announced today.
“Mark Schlissel brings an exceptional portfolio of scholarship and leadership, and just as importantly a tremendous commitment to Michigan’s public ethos,” says Andrea Fischer Newman, chair of the University of Michigan Board of Regents. “I am confident Mark will lead the university into its next century focused on our deepest ideals of world-class academic excellence and public impact.”
Previously, Schlissel served as dean of biological sciences in the College of Letters & Science at the University of California. He will be the 14th president to serve at the University of Michigan, which will celebrate its bicentennial anniversary in 2017.
“It is a tremendous honor to be entrusted with the presidency of one of the nation’s great public universities,” says Schlissel, who received the unanimous vote of the Board of Regents. “I will bring to Michigan a fierce commitment to the importance of public research universities, a strong and personal belief in the ability of education to transform lives, and the understanding that excellence and diversity are inextricably linked.”
A graduate of Princeton University, Schlissel earned both M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He completed his residency in internal medicine at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. His research program has focused on the developmental biology of the immune system.
As a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, he earned awards for his research and teaching. At Berkeley, he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in immunology as well as the gateway course in biology required of all life science majors. In addition, he has mentored more than 20 Ph.D. candidates who did their dissertation research in a lab at either Hopkins or Berkeley.
Regent Katherine E. White, who coordinated the town hall and outreach sessions as part of the presidential search process, describes Schlissel as both a thoughtful leader and an outstanding listener. “He has demonstrated that he listens and solicits input from the campus community including fostering a diverse and inclusive campus environment,” she says.
Schlissel will take over the helm of the $4 billion “Victors for Michigan” fundraising campaign launched last year.
