Mary Sue Coleman, PhD

President Mary Sue Coleman is president emerita of the University of Michigan and former president of the Association of American Universities, which represents the country’s leading research universities. She also is former president of the University of Iowa.

Time magazine named her one of the nation’s “10 best college presidents,” and the American Council on Education honored her with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. 

Throughout her career, she has promoted the educational value of diverse perspectives in the classroom and within the academic community, and she has worked in numerous venues to improve access to higher education for all.

As Michigan’s 13th president from 2002-14, she oversaw the groundbreaking partnership with Google to digitize the University’s 7 million-volume library, launched enduring institutional partnerships with universities in China, Ghana, South Africa, Brazil, and India, revitalized student living and learning experiences through a residential life initiative, and worked tirelessly to promote economic revitalization and innovation within the state of Michigan.

In recognition of these efforts, she was named by President Obama in 2010 to help launch the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, and U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke named her as co-chair of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

At the AAU, she led landmark surveys conducted of 181,752 students from 33 colleges and universities regarding the prevalence of sexual assault and misconduct on campuses and on student attitudes about these issues. The results have helped AAU member institutions as well as other colleges and universities in their efforts to address the problems of sexual assault and other sexual misconduct. 

Coleman returned as U-M president and led the institution from January to October 2022. 

Elected to the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine), she is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In those roles, she has led major studies on the consequences of lack of health insurance within the United States and erosion of state and federal support for the nation’s public research universities.

As a biochemist and faculty member at the University of Kentucky, she built a distinguished academic career through her teaching and research on the immune system and malignancies. Prior to becoming a university president, she was vice chancellor for research and graduate education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and provost at the University of New Mexico. 

She earned her undergraduate degree in chemistry from Grinnell College and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

She chairs the Board of Trustees of the Society for Science. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Kavli Foundation, and the Board of Trustees of Universities Research Association.