Marybeth Gasman has been named the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Endowed Chair in Education in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. She will assume her new role and launch the Samuel D. Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity, and Justice in the fall of 2019.
Currently, Dr. Gasman is the Judy & Howard Berkowitz Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She also serves as the founding director of the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions. She is a scholar of American higher education and focuses on historically Black colleges and universities, racism, diversity, philanthropy, and higher education leadership.
The endowed position is named for the late Samuel DeWitt Proctor, who was a Rutgers faculty member for 15 years and who served as the first Martin Luther King Jr. Chair and visiting professor in the Department of Africana Studies. Proctor was the first Black faculty member at Rutgers to have an endowed professorship named in his honor.
“I am honored to join Rutgers GSE as the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Endowed Chair in Education and a Distinguished Professor,” said Dr. Gasman. “We are at a critical moment for education in our country and I am looking forward to honoring the legacy of Dr. Proctor by advancing his and my collective vision for diversity, justice and equity in education in New Jersey and across the country. I am particularly excited to join a public research university that boasts such rich and beautiful diversity.”
Dr. Gasman holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and communications from St. Norbert College in Wisconsin, and a master’s degree in higher education and a doctoral degree in higher education and law both from Indiana University.