Jinliu Wang, Ph.D., Named President of Worcester Polytechnic Institute
“Grace” Jinliu Wang, PhD, a materials scientist and highly accomplished and collaborative leader in higher education, government, and industry, has been selected as the 17th...
“Grace” Jinliu Wang, PhD, a materials scientist and highly accomplished and collaborative leader in higher education, government, and industry, has been selected as the 17th president of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).
“WPI’s founding principles of theory and practice resonate strongly with me,” Wang said. “WPI is a world-class institution with a unique and vital approach to teaching, learning, and discovery. Preparing STEM-focused professionals to see the world through technological, human, societal, and cultural lenses is distinctive, especially when so brilliantly coupled with WPI’s research and innovation ecosystem.”
Informed by multiple community listening sessions with students, faculty, staff, trustees, parents, and alumni, consistent themes emerged in the presidential search: a leader able to advance WPI as a model for what the future of higher education should look like; to grow WPI’s reputation as a premier STEM university that integrates social sciences, the humanities and arts, and business; and to manage the multiple priorities of well-being, belonging, equity, and inclusion, and attracting and supporting students, faculty, and staff from diverse backgrounds and lived experiences.
“Dr. Wang is precisely the leader WPI needs to take project-based learning and purpose-driven research to the next level,” said WPI Board Chair Bill Fitzgerald. “She is a proven consensus builder who gets to the right decisions at the right time for the right reasons. Building mutually beneficial collaborations has been central to her success and that of the institutions she has served. She is as passionate and skilled at advancing community well-being and sustainable inclusive excellence as she is at investing in global education and research, and she will give our students, faculty, and staff the support they need to thrive in an increasingly interconnected world.”
WittKieffer’s Suzanne Teer, Sandra Chu and Jessica Herrington led this search.
Related Articles
