news
Jenkins announces new provost of Notre Dame
Observer Staff Report | Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Marie Lynn Miranda will serve as the fifth provost of Notre Dame, University President Fr. John Jenkins announced in an email to the campus community Tuesday.
Miranda previously served as the provost of Rice University and will take over the position from Thomas Burish, who served as Notre Dame’s provost for 15 years.
“Professor Miranda rose to the top of a deep and distinguished pool of candidates,” Jenkins said in a press release. “Bringing a wealth of experience from years of leadership and scholarship at major research institutions and a commitment to student well-being and education, she is drawn to the University’s distinctive Catholic mission. Marie Lynn is just the leader we need at this time at Notre Dame.”
The daughter of an immigrant, Miranda said she has personally benefited from the power of education.
“I am grateful on a daily basis for the opportunity that Notre Dame made available to my father, and consequently to my entire family, when he was invited to undertake graduate studies at the University many years ago,” Miranda said in the release. “I am both deeply honored and excited to serve the Notre Dame community as its next provost.”
During her time at Rice, Miranda worked with a $700 million annual operating budget to to lead the university’s academic, research, scholarly and creative programs.
“Major initiatives included the development and implementation of more than $230 million in strategic investments focused on molecular nanotechnology, data sciences, neuro engineering, synthetic and physical biology, inequities and inequalities and overall research competitiveness,” the press release said.
In addition, Miranda prioritized decreasing the disparities between first-generation students and students of low socioeconomic status to their peers, while also working to increase the gender and racial diversity among academic leaders at Rice when she was provost.
Miranda is a leader in the area of geospatial health informatics, according to the release. Her research focuses on the effect of the environment on children, and she is well-known for her work on childhood lead exposure. She has also studied the impact of racial residential segregation.
Prior to serving as the provost at Rice, Miranda held a faculty position at the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment. She also served as the Samuel A. Graham Dean of the school and maintained positions in the department of pediatrics and the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Michigan.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics from Duke, she went on to complete doctoral and master’s degrees in economics from Harvard University. Miranda then returned to Duke and worked as a faculty member in the Nicholas School of the Environment, the integrated toxicology program, department of pediatrics and Duke Global Health Institute.
The Provost Search Committee, composed of five faculty members and one student, and the University’s Board of Trustees unanimously elected Miranda as the fifth provost.
Jenkins urged the campus community to welcome Miranda as a new leader at the University.
“Professor Miranda is excited to join us as a colleague and to lead Notre Dame to realize its promise — to become, even more, a preeminent research university with an unsurpassed undergraduate education, informed in all its endeavors by a distinctive Catholic mission,” Jenkins said in the email.
