Judith A. Ramaley

In recognition of her decades of active involvement in the association and her significant contributions to American higher education, Judith A. Ramaley was named a Distinguished Fellow of AAC&U in 2017. Dr. Ramaley has served in key leadership roles in AAC&U, including as a member of the AAC&U Board of Directors, the Editorial Advisory Board of Liberal Education, and the faculty of AAC&U Summer Institutes. She was chair of the Greater Expectations National Panel and policy advisor to the project Quality Collaboratives: Assessing and Reporting Degree Qualifications Profile Competencies in the Context of Transfer. She is coauthor of two AAC&U publications, Collaboration for Student Transfer: A Nationwide Degree Qualifications Profile Experiment (2016) and The Quality of a College Degree: Toward New Frameworks, Evidence, and Interventions (2015).

Dr. Ramaley is a trustee, president emerita and distinguished professor of public service at Portland State University, and president emerita of Winona State University. She is also a member of the board of Second Nature, an organization committed to the creation of a healthy, just, and sustainable society through the transformation of higher education. Ramaley holds a bachelor’s degree in zoology from Swarthmore College and a PhD in anatomy from the University of California–Los Angeles. She has served as visiting senior scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, assistant director of the Education and Human Resources Directorate at the National Science Foundation, Presidential Professor of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Maine, and fellow of the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy.

She was president and professor of biology at Winona State University (2005-2012), the University of Vermont (1997–2001), and Portland State University (1990–1997). Before steering her career toward administration and educational policy, Dr. Ramaley was a professor of anatomy and physiology with more than 65 articles and chapters on the control of puberty onset, stress and fertility, and the development of biological rhythms. She has published another 40 articles on educational reform, science, technology, engineering and mathematics education, and leading organizational change.