Dr. Marybeth Gasman, who has established herself as one of the nation’s most prominent scholars of historically Black colleges in particular and minority-serving institutions in general, is leaving the University and Pennsylvania to join the faculty at the Graduate School of Education (GSE) at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, in the Fall.
The Center for Minority Serving Institutions (CMSI)— a repository for research, data, and best practices about MSIs — that Gasman created five years ago, will move with her to Rutgers.
On Thursday afternoon, the Rutgers Board of Governors approved Gasman’s appointment as the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Endowed Chair in Education. Her appointment is at the rank of Distinguished Professor and she will begin in her new role on September 1, 2019.
Gasman will teach one course a year and direct the newly formed Samuel D. Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity, and Justice that will house the Center for Minority Serving Institutions along with other equity-focused initiatives.
“I think it’s really an exciting opportunity,” said Gasman in an interview with Diverse. “I’ve been very happy with our Center and this is an opportunity to expand that work, build on that work, and do something much bigger.”
Rutgers-New Brunswick interim provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, Dr. Wanda J. Blanchett, hailed Gasman’s appointment as a “game changer” for the 95-year-old GSE and the state’s flagship institution.
“She has a proven track record around working effectively with historically Black colleges and institutions and we would be hard pressed to find someone else in the country who has her record of mentoring outstanding doctoral candidates of color,” said Blanchett, the dean of GSE, who added that diversity, equity and social justice work has been a central focus of the school’s mission and work. “So to have Marybeth join us at this particular time with her track record particularly around students of color, which is an area quite frankly that we have struggled with, is kind of like the missing link to an already well put together puzzle.”
