Maura Mast has been named the twenty-third president of Seattle University in Washington. Upon assuming her role on September 1, she will become the university’s first woman president.
According to the U.S. Department of Education’s most recent data, Seattle University enrolls nearly 4,100 undergraduates and more than 3,100 graduate students. Women represent 60 percent of the undergraduate population.
In 2015, Dr. Mast became the first woman and first mathematician to serve as dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, an undergraduate liberal arts college at Fordham University in New York City. A scholar of differential geometry, Dr. Mast stepped down from her deanship in 2025 to complete the third edition of her book, Common Sense Mathematics (American Mathematical Society, 2nd edition, 2021), and conduct research on international Catholic higher education.
Prior to her tenure at Fordham, Dr. Mast taught at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the University of Northern Iowa. She has held visiting positions at Northeastern University in Boston, Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Dr. Mast is a co-editor of Women in Mathematics: Celebrating the Centennial of the Mathematical Association of America (Springer, 2017).
“I am both excited and humbled to be chosen as the twenty-third president of Seattle University,” said Dr. Mast. “I have a deep respect for the university community’s commitment to transforming students through a rigorous education rooted in the Jesuit traditions of fearless inquiry, scholarship, faith, justice, and innovation. Our world urgently needs spaces of dialogue and discernment that actively work to heal deep divisions and build a more equitable society. Guided by our remarkable faculty and an enduring dedication to justice, Seattle University possesses the unique momentum to lead this work. We are poised for extraordinary things, and I look forward to working with the entire community to elevate SU’s distinctive voice and impact.”
Dr. Mast received her bachelor’s degree in mathematics and anthropology from the University of Notre Dame and her Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of North Carolina.