Susana Rivera-Mills has been named the fourteenth president of Aurora University In Illinois. She will begin her presidency on June 1. Dr. Rivera-Mills will be the first Latina to lead the university as president since the institution’s founding in 1893.
Aurora University enrolls just over 4,100 undergraduate students and more than 2,000 graduate students, according to the most recent statistics available from the U.S. Department of Education. Women make up 66 percent of the undergraduate student body.
“To say that I am thrilled only begins to express the emotions that I feel at having been selected to serve as Aurora University’s 14th president,” said Dr. Rivera-Mills. “Higher education is in a place of increasing challenges and accelerated change. AU’s resilience and strength are evident in all of its accomplishments, and we will continue to courageously tackle these challenges. More than that, we will be a model of excellence and innovation for what the future of higher education needs as we serve a diverse community of learners.”
Since 2018, Dr. Rivera-Mills has been serving as provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Earlier, she was dean for undergraduate studies, vice provost and a professor of Spanish linguistics at Oregon State University in Corvallis. Dr. Rivera-Mills first joined the faculty at Oregon State in 2007.
A native of El Salvador who came to the United States at the age of 12, Dr. Rivera-Mills holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Spanish linguistics from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. in romance languages from the University of New Mexico.