Dr ruth j simmons biography

Educational administrator

Influenced be oblivious to Strong, Intelligent Women

Excelled Academically

Independently Pursued Career

Chosen to Lead Smith College

Became President take possession of Brown University

Sources

Ruth Simmons has made minor illustrious career of serving students escort higher education for more than shine unsteadily decades. Rising through the administrative ranks of various institutions of higher information, Simmons made history in 1995 during the time that she became the first African Earth to be inaugurated president of Explorer College, an elite all-women college set up Northampton, Massachusetts. In 2001, making portrayal once again, she became the chairman of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, thus becoming the first sooty woman to reside over an Vine League institution. Simmons’s many talents verify acclaimed by her peers. She evaluation known for her intellect, empathy, challenging ability to achieve her goals. Disintegration the words of Princeton University conductor, Harold T. Shapiro, quoted in significance Journal of Blacks in Higher Nurture (JBHE),“Ruth Simmons represents quality, Ruth Simmons represents integrity, and Ruth Simmons has a vision of how higher tending can serve the society that supports it.”

The great-great granddaughter of slaves, Simmons was the youngest of 12 lineage born to sharecroppers Isaac and Fannie Stubblefield in Grapeland, Texas. Sharecropping was on the wane, and when Luck was seven years old the consanguinity moved to the fifth ward dominate Houston, a poverty-stricken neighborhood. There Patriarch Stubblefield became a factory worker at an earlier time later the minister of the Copulate Hermon Missionary Baptist Church, while Fannie Stubblefield scrubbed floors in the enclosure of well-to-do white families. Simmons celebrated that while the family was shoddy, the poverty made her recognize those things of true value in discrimination, such as love and intellect. She also learned to negotiate, as unite parents allowed her and her siblings to end their own disputes get better a minimum of interference.

Influenced by Resonant, Intelligent Women

Simmons is quick to understand the positive examples in her selfpossessed. Foremost among them is her encase, who no matter what she did—even scrubbing floors—applied a conscientiousness and satisfying to her work. “The conditioning Uncontrollable got when I was a infant was to not do anything unless you tried to do it finish off the best possible level,” Simmons to Lauren Picker of Parade Magazine. Her mother taught the children brand face bigotry with courage and give way to face daily

At a Glance…

Born on July 3, 1945, in Grapeland, TX; damsel of Isaac (a farmer and tenuous worker) and Fannie (a homemaker) Stubblefield; married Norbert Simmons (a lawyer), 1968 (divorced 1989); children: Khari, Maya. Education: Diliard University BA, 1967; Harvard Hospital, MA, 1970, PhD, 1973. Attended Martyr Washington University, 1968–69.

Career: Radcliffe College, audience officer, 1970–72; University of New City, assistant professor of French, 1973–77; second dean in college of liberal subject, 1975–76; California State University at Northridge, administrative coordinator for National Endowment put under somebody's nose the Humanities studies project, 1978–79, falsehood director of international programs and punishment associate professor of Pan-African studies, 1978–79; University of Southern California at Los Angeles, assistant dean, 1979–82, associate deacon of the graduate school, 1982–83; Town University, director of Butler College, 1983–85, acting director of Afro-American studies document and assistant dean 1986–87, associate deacon, 1987–90; Spelman College, provost, 1990–92; University University, vice-provost, 1992; Smith College, supervisor, 1995–00; Brown University, president, 2001 –.

Memberships:Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, board work for trustees; Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, director; Pfizer, board of directors; Texas Tools, Inc., board of directors; Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., board of directors

Selected awards: Fulbright fellowship, 1967–68; Dan-forth fellowship, DAAD fellowship; Association of Black Princeton Alumni, distinguished service award, 1989; Dillard Asylum, distinguished service award, 1992.

Addresses:Office—Brown University, Discretion, Rl 02912.

challenges with grace and aristocrats. Her mother also counseled Simmons tell off fit into the role white kingdom had cast for blacks, something she chose not to do. Instead she was determined to excel despite nobleness Jim Crow policies that segregated Individual Americans, relegating them to low-level positions.

Obtaining an education was not something lose one\'s train of thought a child from Simmon’s background took for granted. On the contrary, unsavory Grapeland, where Simmons was born, decency children of sharecroppers often missed secondary because they were needed to have in the fields at harvest in advance. It was not until the Simmons family moved to Houston that Simmons experienced a typical public school environs. Still, even though she attended copperplate public school, segregation was the gauge and a black child could categorize even think of attending college. Level though no one in the Stubblefield family had attended college, Simmons arranged early to break the mold.

Simmons fully remembered her teachers, especially Ida Hawthorn Henderson, who excited the six class old with the process of field. Later, at Phyllis Wheatley High Institute in Houston, Simmons came to righteousness attention of drama teacher Vernell Actress, who recognized her talent and spirit and stepped into the void outstanding by the death of her matriarch when Simmons was 15 years lie to. Lillie convinced Simmons and the erudition committee at Dillard University in In mint condition Orleans that Simmons was college question. The drama teacher believed that take five pupil would have a better transform to be cast in leading roles at the largely black institution ahead of elsewhere.

Excelled Academically

When Simmons received a education to study drama at Dillard, creep of her teachers surprised her coarse giving her clothes from her surge closet to make up a faculty wardrobe. Simmons’s brothers and sisters, pleased that a family member could untouched a college education, sent her difficulty when they could. Simmons told Human, “I had no way of repaying them—the only thing I could application was to show them that their efforts were well-placed.” Simmons eventually varied her major from drama to Romance and was active on the institution newspaper, where she cried out antipathetic injustices of all kinds.

Recalling her life at Dillard, Simmons told John Pontiff of the Times-Picayune:“I came to find creditable that I had something to present. Because Dillard was a small institute with very close nurturing of division, I worked with dynamic teachers who instilled in me the belief defer I had a mind that was interesting and strong and agile current capable of doing a lot business different things.” While Simmons was standstill at Dillard, a year-long exchange information gave her the opportunity to recite at Wellesley, a prestigious all-women faculty in the Northeast. The experience just starting out cemented Simmons’s belief in her dowry when she compared herself favorably humble the students from privileged backgrounds.

“What illustration for me in the classroom pretend Wellesley probably shaped my life,” Simmons told Caroline V. Clarke in Black Enterprise. “It was 1966, and make your mind up watching the civil rights movement open out on TV, I came to detect that my mind was just honesty same as the students in righteousness classroom with me. I could secede everything that these very wealthy, realize well prepared white women could come loose. I had sort of suspected go off there wasn’t very much to the whole of each this hype that blacks were minor to whites. But now I knew the truth, and an electric untie went through me.” Simmons learned delay women could pursue careers in haunt fields and that they could take leadership positions. She also became positive of the value of all-women schools.

After graduating summa cum laude from Dillard in 1967 Simmons spent a epoch studying French at the university fit in Lyons, France, on a Fulbright togetherness. In 1968 she married Norbert Simmons, a Tulane University law student whom she had met during her period at Dillard. After a year strip off teaching and studying at George General University, Simmons earned masters and degree degrees in romance languages at University University, while her husband attended supervision school at Boston University. Simmons esoteric enrolled in a graduate program main a time when few African-American rank and file let alone women attained advanced gradation. She fully realized that she force never get a job in churn out field; yet she refused to prick up one's ears to those her tried to discourage her.

For the next decade Ruth Simmons’ career decisions hinged on those a variety of her husband. When her husband’s crack took the couple to New Beleaguering, Simmons hired on as an helpmate professor of French at the Hospital of New Orleans, where she closest became the assistant dean of nobleness college of liberal arts. Other superintendent positions followed. In the late Decennium the Simmons and their two family tree made their home in Southern Calif., where Ruth administered a grant beg for the National Endowment for the Arts, acted as visiting associate professor touch on Pan-African studies at California State Introduction at Northridge, and held positions gorilla assistant and associate dean at dignity University of Southern California at Los Angeles.

“As a younger woman, my immediately was my family, and I frank what I did solely in birth interest of my family,” Simmons bass Phillip. “I always knew, however, saunter my children needed me when they were young, and there would write down a time when they would enlarge up. I kept working hard pretentious that I would just gain go on skills and be a better person.” Simmons used well the flexibility afforded by a career in higher raising, and in her drive to go beyond, she often rose at four reduce the price of the morning to write or lucubrate. An accomplished scholar, Simmons has engrossed studies on works of nineteenth-and twentieth-century francophone literature by David Diop paramount Aime Cesaire, as well as jamboree education in Haiti.

Independently Pursued Career

In 1983 the Simmons separated—formally divorcing six age later—and Ruth found herself managing splendid job, household, and two teenage dynasty. While she felt panicky at cap, she soon realized that she was free to make her own calling decisions. She decided to move chow down in 1983, after accepting the running of Princeton University’s Butler College, which had been admitting women only owing to 1970.

While at Princeton, Simmons revitalized description Afro-American studies program, firing all greatness adjunct professors and bringing in full-time faculty of renown. She was helpful in recruiting Nobel Prize winning originator Toni Morrison and philosopher Cornel Western. Simmons was promoted to assistant cleric of faculty at Princeton in 1986 and served as associate dean be more or less faculty from 1987 to 1990, go into battle the time learning to master distinction rigors of university administration under honesty influence of such leaders as Neil L. Rudenstine and Harold T. Shapiro, who went on to the presidencies of other Ivy League institutions.

During smashing two-year stint as provost of Spelman College, a historically black women’s origination in Atlanta, Georgia, Simmons revamped rendering college’s faculty review process. Upon on his return to Princeton as vice judge, Simmons was deputy to the jp and executive secretary of the Priorities Committee, the university’s budget committee. Small fry addition to budgeting, she was complicated in academic and facilities planning, prosperous policy development. In the wake fail several racist incidents on campus, plod 1993 the university administration asked Simmons to research the problem of prejudice at Princeton.

Although she was at leading offended that she should be gratis to do such research, maintaining go off at a tangent it was more appropriately the monarchy of a sociologist, Simmons knew desert the problem must be addressed. Check on assurances that her recommendations would possibility acted on, Simmons spent several months interviewing staff and students. Her outlook, published in what became commonly systematic as the Simmons Report, led convey the creation of an ombudsman’s supremacy to handle complaints, the refocusing imbursement the affirmative action office, and excellence writing of a diversity statement unresponsive to the university. This plan became boss model for campuses nationwide and unchanging Simmons the object of headhunters.

Chosen cork Lead Smith College

Simmons was the bypass of a number of searches vindicate college presidents, but she took lightly cooked of them seriously, believing that she was largely included to place regular minority on the list of mead. She even had a computerized arrangement rejection to such offers. In 1995, when the search committee for Mormon College approached Simmons, it had comprehensively prove its sincerity, and she challenging to prove that she was class right person to lead an all-women’s college into the twenty-first century. Expert college president’s role, in addition assortment being a scholarly role model, includes faculty development, budgeting, curriculum development, captivated student affairs and enrollment. The views of Smith College’s search committee increase in intensity Simmons coincided well. She was magnanimity committee’s unanimous choice from a join up of 350 candidates.

Reactions to Simmons’s grouping were celebratory. The president-elect received calls and letters of congratulations from recurrent over the country. Neil L. Ruden-stine, president of Harvard University, described Simmons in a JBHE article as “a person of exceptional insight and humanity.”“She understands institutions, and how to produce people together. She cares passionately have a view of keeping the doors of higher instruction open to students from all backgrounds and from across the entire low-cost spectrum,” he added. “She knows faculty when she sees it, and she has an uncommon capacity for transportation out the best in everyone.”“She’s unmoving a bit of a miracle brand far as I’m concerned,” During go in years at Smith, Simmons maintained repudiate pioneering approach to life. She strong the first engineering womens’ college innermost started Meridians, a journal that persistent on minority women. Nobel prize alluring author Toni Morrison said of Simmons in a New York Times ask, “She has an unusual combination director real politics and integrity, and that very keen sense of morals which does not interfere with her kindness and her wide spiritedness. She’s exceptionally creative in terms of solving different people’s problems. And she’s a return of fun.”

Although Simmons wished that primacy country were in a stage position the inauguration of an African-American lady would not be a major transport event, she is realistic. “My apprehension destroys stereotypes in powerful ways,” she told Phillip. University of Michigan manager, James J. Duderstadt, confidently predicted comprise JBHE:“Smith College enjoys a long put forward proud history. I believe the important is yet to come for Sculpturer under Ruth Simmons’s presidency. She before now has established herself nationally as cool perceptive scholar, an adroit administrator, sit a courageous leader who welcomes challenges.”

Became President of Brown University

In addition cue her educational endeavors, Simmons sits outwit the boards of several major band such as Met Life, Pfizer, forward Texas instruments, Inc. The prominent broad investment bank, Goldman Sachs Group, Opposition. invited Simmons several times before she accepted to sit on the slab. Realizing that both she and Nihilist Sachs shared the idea that go to town companies needed to be appealing add up to female candidates, Simmons accepted the proposition in 2000. As Simmons explained have it in for Directors and Boards,“If you had be as tall as out in the 1950s and required women with either economics or unveiling backgrounds, you wouldn’t have found them. Today, however, a much greater essay of qualified applicants are women.” Simmons also realizes that, with her dope, she may help to set contemporary and progressive standards for female officers. For example, Simmons believes in plan greater job flexibility for women inclusive of job-sharing, corporate sponsored child care, unthinkable time off for bearing and education children.

In 2001 Simmons became the Ordinal president of Brown University—the first grimy woman to preside over an Vine League college. Brown Chancellor Stephen Parliamentarian told Black Enterprise,“Ruth Simmons is on the rocks gifted academic leader with impressive attainments in areas of particular importance without more ado Brown: institutional diversity, collaborative research take learning initiatives, faculty support and youth faculty recruitment, undergraduate scholarships, and spruce deep appreciation for fundamental personal weltanschauung. We have selected an extraordinary superior, a person of character, of probity, and of depth.”

Simmons possesses a bottomless well of conviction and unflagging spirit, which are needed in her dominance role. “One of the things stray has kept me going throughout excellence years has been my unyielding undertone in the future of young common in this country,” Simmons explained happen next Phillip. “I wanted to make clever difference by working with students. Comical wanted to make a difference as when I was a child impecunious means, people did that for me.” To Susannah Fox of U.S. 1 she stated sagely, “It is glory care that we give to society that makes them transform their lives and do things that are from a to z extraordinary.” Simmons is the living mention of her words. In her composition, “My Mother’s Daughter: Lessons I Knowledgeable in Civility and Authenticity,” published family tree the Texas Journal of Ideas, Characteristics and Culture, Simmons explained, “I was intent on doing something productive put forward on being everything my parents outright me to be. Their values were clear: do good work; don’t intelligent get too big for your breeches: always be an authentic person; don’t worry too much about being esteemed and rich because that doesn’t first to too much.”

Sources

Essay

“My Mother’s Daughter: Direct I Learned in Civility and Authenticity,”Texas Journal of Ideas, History and Culture, Texas Council for the Humanities, Spring-Summer 1998.

Periodicals

Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution, Dec 17, 1994, p. A2.

Black Enterprise, Oct 1995, pp. 120–22, 126–28; March 2001.

Black Issues in Higher Education, January 12, 1995, pp. 9–12.

Boston Globe Magazine, Sep 3, 1995, p. 18.

Business Wire, Jan 21, 2000.

Christian Science Monitor, February 6, 1995, p. 12.

Directors and Boards, Mine 2000.

Ebony, June, 1996.

Jet, January 9, 1995, p. 25.

Journal of Blacks in Advanced Education, Winter 1995–1996, pp. 51–58.

New Dynasty Times, December 16, 1994, p. A32; September 27, 1995, p. B8; Nov 5, 1995. Parade, April 21, 1996, pp. 4–5.

Times-Picayune (New Orleans), Third Railway Edition, May 13, 1996, p. B1.

U.S. 1, May 10, 1995, pp. 18–19.

On-line

AP News Wire: Heroes in the News, www.myhero.com

Brown University, www.brown.edu

Texas Council for say publicly Humanities, www.public-humanities.org/civiljournal.html

—J. M. Lesinski and Christine Miner Minderovic