Growing up in China, Dr. Jean Zu had aspirations of becoming a teacher from the moment that she entered elementary school.
“I always wanted to teach,” she says. “I thought I wanted to be an elementary teacher, but then I realized that I wanted to teach at the university-level.”
After earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Tsinghua University in China, Zu enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the University of Manitoba in Canada. In 1994, she secured a tenure-track teaching position in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto.
Committed to excellence in teaching, Zu was promoted to the rank of associate professor in 1999, full professor in 2004 and department chair in 2009. All the while, she kept busy, churning out more than 300 refereed papers, including 160 journal articles, and securing millions of dollars in grants and contracts to support her budding research agenda.
After eight years on the job as department chair at the University of Toronto, in 2017, Zu was named the dean of the Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. School of Engineering & Science at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, just across from Manhattan.
Zu says that she has been preparing herself over the years for the new job.
“During the eight years as department chair, I felt very passionate about the work,” she says in an interview with Diverse. “I absolutely enjoyed it very much and that of course, paved the way for the deanship.”
