Now in the ninth year of her presidency of Marymount University in Northern Virginia, Dr. Irma Becerra relishes her accomplishments while continuing to build for the future.
From the onset, Becerra’s vision included having the university be nationally recognized. While Marymount had been regionally recognized, she wanted it to have national visibility. The goal was to be in the top 400 universities in the nation. That vision was realized in 2022. Two years a er that, it moved to its current spot with U.S. News & World Report, 273. It is ranked 189 in social mobility.
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Now in the ninth year of her presidency of Marymount University in Northern Virginia, Dr. Irma Becerra relishes her accomplishments while continuing to build for the future.
From the onset, Becerra’s vision included having the university be nationally recognized. While Marymount had been regionally recognized, she wanted it to have national visibility. The goal was to be in the top 400 universities in the nation. That vision was realized in 2022. Two years a er that, it moved to its current spot with U.S. News & World Report, 273. It is ranked 189 in social mobility.
“That, to me, is one of the most important accolades because this is what we do,” Becerra says. “I treasure that along with the Carnegie Classification as an Opportunity College and University (it also has Carnegie Classification as a Research College and University).
It means we say yes to students that other universities say no to, and then when they graduate, they outperform their predicted indicators in terms of their earnings.”
Since Becerra’s arrival at Marymount, federal funding and research have gone up signicantly. This works well with the desire to provide undergraduate students with hands-on research experiences. Students are able to enter careers a er earning a bachelor’s degree, and those desirous of graduate school are also well prepared, with acceptance into master’s and doctoral programs.
Inspired by Jim Collins’ Book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t, Becerra shaped Marymount’s strategic plan, “Momentum.” An electrical engineer by training, several years prior to becoming president, she was a professor in the Florida International University College of Business. Her research area was knowledge management, working on how technology can be strategic to organizations.
“To build Marymount’s strategic plan, we did significant engagement with the community—students, faculty, staff, trustees, alumni and friends of the university—in defining where Marymount would be in five years,” Becerra says. “We had the pandemic in between, so we extended the strategic plan to this year, 2026. We are now doing a refresh of our strategic plan.”
A crucial issue in the original strategic plan was revamping the university’s technology. There has been a technology transformation, which Becerra. describes as “from the Flintstones to the Jetsons.” Upon her arrival at Marymount, she saw flat files, which existed before relational databases. Now, there is a state-of-the-art, cloud-based system, completely integrated.
“If you look at the enrollment growth that we’ve had over the last four years, it’s been continuous,” Becerra says. “Without the technology we have today, we could not have done it. We sent over 7 million messages to prospective students this year. We had almost 8,000 students apply for a class of around 500. The digital transformation of Marymount is what has enabled us, among other things, to have the success that we’re having. Together with launching new market-driven degrees and closing programs that were underenrolled.”
A huge development during Becerra’s presidency is that Marymount has become the first Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in the state of Virginia. Born in Cuba, which her family fled with virtually nothing, and raised largely in Puerto Rico, higher education provided an opportunity for her to have a professional life and career.
“Education was transformational to me and my family,” she explains. “About half of the students are first-generation and education will transform their lives. … They need personal attention.”
Becerra is referring to high touch practices, such as careful advising and peer mentoring, which is aided by small class sizes that enable professors to directly engage with students. It is a requirement that every student has an internship and/or does research. A course was created for freshmen called Marymount University 101, which covers a range of topics, including financial literacy, career readiness and artificial intelligence (AI). Faculty is also receiving AI training.
Becoming an HSI was not part of the university’s strategic plan, but Becerra received a letter from the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities noting that Marymount was an emerging Hispanic institution (nearing 25% Hispanic enrollment). Having previously worked at HSI institutions, she knew the doors that HSI status could open. The university focused on receiving that federal designation, which happened in 2022, and HSI status has helped fuel the growth in enrollment.
“Today about one in three of our students are Hispanic and one in six are African American,” Becerra says. “We see diversity as a source of strength for us.”
This story originally ran in The EDU Ledger's October 1, 2026 edition. Subscribe here for full access.
