University of Rochester President Sarah Mangelsdorf has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s most highly regarded honors for artistic, academic, and scientific leaders who engage in advancing the public good.
Mangelsdorf, who also holds the title of G. Robert Witmer Jr. University Professor, is one of 276 artists, scholars, scientists, and executives in the public, nonprofit, and private sectors inducted into the 2020 class. Joining her as a member this year are songwriter and activist Joan Baez, Brandeis University law professor Anita Hill, former US attorney general Eric Holder Jr., author Ann Patchett, poets Joy Harjo and Claudia Rankine, NIH immunologist Yasmine Belkaid, University of Washington president Ana Mari Cauce, and Duke University president Vincent Price.
Also elected this year was Grammy Award–winning composer and Eastman School of Music graduate Maria Schneider ’85E (MM).
Since July 1, 2019, Mangelsdorf has served as the 11th president of the University, where she is also a professor of psychology. As a noted leader in higher education, she has earned recognition for her work on issues of academic quality, educational access, and diversity and inclusion at some of the nation’s leading public and private institutions. In her first year at Rochester, she has highlighted the strength of the institution’s multimillion-dollar research endeavor, the University’s ties to the Rochester community and region, and the importance of equity and inclusion as key attributes of Rochester’s values as a university.
In announcing the members of the class this month, David Oxtoby, the president of the academy, said the inductees are “united by a place in history and by an opportunity to shape the future through the academy’s work to advance the public good.”
Internationally known for her research on emotional and personality development, Mangelsdorf began her career on the faculty of the University of Michigan. She served as chair of the psychology department and dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was later named dean of the largest college at Northwestern University, and served as provost and chief academic officer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison before being named Rochester’s president.
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Mangelsdorf is a graduate of Oberlin College, and she received her PhD from the University of Minnesota.
Founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock, and others, the academy was established to honor exceptionally accomplished individuals and to recognize excellence and expertise and the role they play in American public life.
As a member of the academy, Mangelsdorf joins several University community members who have been inducted. A sample list includes current faculty members Richard Eisenberg, the Tracy Harris Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemistry; Joanna Scott, the Roswell S. Burrows Professor of English; Stanley Engerman, the John H. Munro Professor of Economics and professor of history; Michael Tanenhaus, the Beverly Petterson Bishop and Charles W. Bishop Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Linguistics; John (Jack) Werren, the Nathaniel and Helen Wisch Professor of Biology; and Lynne Maquat, the J. Lowell Orbison Distinguished Service Alumni Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Former faculty members who were inducted include the late Richard Fenno Jr., Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science, the late Esther Conwell ’45 (MA), a research professor of chemistry and physics, and the late poet Anthony Hecht.
Alumni members include the late Nobel Prize laureate Arthur Kornberg ’41M (MD), operatic soprano and Grammy Award winner Renée Fleming ’83E (MM), Donald Henderson ’54M (MD), an epidemiologist who led the worldwide effort to eradicate smallpox, and John (Jack) Rowe ’70M (MD), the Julius B. Richmond Professor of Health Policy and Aging at the Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
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