Mary Evans Sias Assumes AÛ°PÛ°LÛ°U Board Leadership

Nov. 15, 2010—Mary Evans Sias, president of Kentucky State University, took the gavel as chair of the board of the directors of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities today during the association's 123rd Annual Meeting in Dallas. Sias replaces Daniel M. Fogel, president of the University of Vermont, whose one-year term expired.

Sias is the 13th president of Kentucky State University (KSU) and assumed the presidency of the university in April of 2004. During the past six years under her leadership, KSU has consistently experienced increases in enrollments, expanded undergraduate and graduate program offerings, added new student support services, updated technology and substantially improved infrastructure.

In addition, three others assumed key senior leadership roles:

• Eugene Block, chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles, was elected chair-elect and will succeed Sias in November 2011.
• Sally Mason, president of the University of Iowa, was elected chair of the Association's Council of Presidents, replacing Block.
• M.R.C. Greenwood, president, University of Hawaii System, was elected secretary of the Council of Presidents

Veteran Educator and Administrator

An experienced educator and administrator, Sias served as associate provost as well as senior vice president for student affairs and external relations at the University of Texas at Dallas between 1994 and 2004. Prior to serving at UT Dallas, she was the chief executive officer of the YWCA of Metropolitan Dallas for 13 years.

Throughout her professional career, volunteerism has been an integral part of her life. While in Dallas, Sias served as vice chair of a hospital board, president of the Tejas Council of Girl Scouts, vice chair of the Dallas Foundation and was a member of the Board of Oaks Bank and Trust Company. She is a graduate of Leadership Dallas, Leadership Texas and Leadership America.

Sias serves on the board of directors of the Frankfort YMCA, the Frankfort Chamber of Commerce and Girl Scouts of Kentucky’s Wilderness Road Council. She is also a member of the Woman’s Club of Frankfort, the Frankfort-Lexington Chapter of the Links, Inc. Additionally, Sias serves on the board of directors of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), is chair of the Council of Presidents of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association (SIAC), serves on the executive committee of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO) and is a member of the USDA 1890 Task Force.

Sias serves as a member of the executive steering committee for the Association of State Colleges and Universities’ (AASCU) Millennium Leadership Institute and chair of the Professional Development Committee that plans professional development programs for new and experienced campus presidents. A legislatively appointed member of the Kentucky Agriculture Development Board, Sias recently retired from the board of directors of Leadership Kentucky and completed a two-year term as state representative to AASCU.

In 2009, Sias received the Thurgood Marshall College Fund’s Educational Leadership Award and is the 2010 recipient of the Martha Lane Collins Women’s Leadership Award from Women Leading Kentucky, the Minority Access Role Model of the Year, and the Education First Foundation’s HBCU Showcase Honor.

Sias is a graduate, summa cum laude, of Tougaloo College and earned an MBA from Abilene Christian College. She also earned a Master of Science degree and a Ph.D., both in sociology, from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she was a Ford Foundation Fellow.

Photo Caption:  Daniel M. Fogel passes the AÛ°PÛ°LÛ°U chair's gavel to Mary Evans Sias during the annual change in leadership.