The Texas Conference on Student Success is thrilled to announce the 2024 opening keynote speaker: Dr. Ruth Simmons. In her presentation on “Student Resilience in Times of Adversity,” Simmons will share insight from her multi-decade career at the helm of several types of higher education institutions with particular emphasis on the unifying themes and lessons she has learned about student success from multiple institutions. She will also focus on what she has learned from students about the impact of student success efforts.
Simmons is a distinguished presidential fellow at Rice University and adviser to the president of Harvard University on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) initiatives. She has served as president of three universities: Prairie View A&M University, an HBCU institution; Brown University, where she became the first African American president of an Ivy League institution; and Smith College, the nation’s largest women’s college. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Dillard University and a master’s and doctorate from Harvard University in romance languages and literature.
Simmons is the recipient of numerous honors, including a Fulbright Fellowship to France, the 2001 President’s Award from the United Negro College Fund, the 2002 Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal, the 2004 Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medal, the Foreign Policy Association Medal, the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, and the Centennial Medal from Harvard University. She has received more than 40 honorary degrees from universities around the world, including Oxford University, Ewha Womans University in South Korea, and the American College of Greece.
Simmons is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves on the boards of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Alley Theatre, the MacArthur Foundation, Morehouse College, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Holdsworth Center, and Hines Global Income Trust. In 2011, she received Brown University’s highest faculty honor: the Susan Colver Rosenberger Medal. The president of France named her chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, and President Joe Biden named her to the White House HCBU Advisory Board.
In 2023, she released a memoir “Up Home: One Girl’s Journey” about her journey growing up in the segregated South, including Houston’s Greater Fifth Ward, and the people who influenced her on her path to leading some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions.
Don’t miss this keynote presentation! Register today to attend the 2024 Texas Conference on Student Success.