Dr. Ruth Jean Simmons is the 18th and current president of Brown University, the first black president of an Ivy League institution. Simmons was also Brown's first female president Simmons assumed office in fall of 2001. Simmons holds appointments as a professor in the Departments of Comparative Literature and Africana Studies.
Simmons was born on July 3, 1945 in in Grapeland, Texas, the youngest of 12 children and daughter of a sharecropper. She earned her bachelor's degree from Dillard Universityy in New Orleans in 1967 and earned her master's and doctorate in Romance literature from Harvard University in 1970 and 1973, respectively.
Simmons first positions in academic administration were at the University of Southern California, starting in 1979 as assistant dean of graduate studies, and then as associate dean of graduate studies. She was a professor of Romance languages and became a dean at Princeton University from 1983 to 1990. She served as provost at HBCU Spelman College from 1990 to 1992.
In 1995 Simmons became the first African America woman to head a major college or university when she was selected as president of Smith College, which she led until 2001. As president of Smith College, Simmons started the engineering program.
Ruth Simmons became president of Brown in 2001. At Brown, she completed an ambitious $1.4 billion initiative - the largest in Brown's history - known as Boldly Brown: The Campaign for Academic Enrichment in order to enhance Brown’s academic programs. In 2005, President Simmons earned enough confidence in her leadership of Brown to motivate philanthropist and former Brown student Sidney E. Franj to make the largest aggregate monetary contribution to Brown in its entire history in the amount of $120 million. The Frank gift was principally devoted to scholarship assistance to Brown students and to Brown's programs in the sciences.
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