2025 Annual National Conference

Jennifer King Rice began her appointment as senior vice president and provost in July 2021.

She was previously dean of the College of Education, where she focused her efforts to align educational resources with initiatives to advance excellence, equity and social justice in preschool through graduate school. Rice has served on the faculty and in college leadership roles at UMD for more than 25 years, and has been recognized as a UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher.

Before coming to Maryland, she was a researcher at Mathematica Policy Research in Washington, D.C. Rice’s research draws on the discipline of economics to study policy questions concerning excellence and equity in K-12 education systems. An expert on school finance and teacher policy, she regularly advises state and federal agencies.

A prolific scholar, she has served on the editorial boards of American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and Education Finance and Policy. In addition to positions as a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation postdoctoral fellow and a visiting fellow at the Urban Institute, she is a past president of the Association for Education Finance and Policy.

She completed her B.S. in mathematics and English at Marquette University and earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in educational administration and social foundations from Cornell University.

Lynn Pasquerella was appointed president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities in 2016, after serving as the eighteenth president of Mount Holyoke College. She has held positions as Provost at the University of Hartford and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Rhode Island, where she taught for more than two decades. A philosopher whose work has combined teaching and scholarship with local and global engagement, Pasquerella has written extensively on medical ethics, metaphysics, public policy, and the philosophy of law. Her most recent book, What We Value: Public Health, Social Justice, and Educating for Democracy, examines the role of higher education in addressing some of the most pressing contemporary issues at the intersection of ethics, law, and public policy. Pasquerella is immediate past president of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and the host of Northeast Public Radio’s The Academic Minute.

She is a graduate of Quinebaug Valley Community College, Mount Holyoke College, and Brown University. Her awards and honors include receiving the President’s Award and Judith Krug Medal from Phi Beta Kappa; the William Rogers Award and the Horace Mann Medal from Brown University; the STAR Scholars Network North Star Lifetime Achievement Award; Mary Baldwin University’s Algernon Sydney Sullivan Service to Humanity Award; the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences Advocacy Award; Quinebaug Valley Community College Champions Award; and the Mount Holyoke Alumni Association’s Elizabeth Topham Kennan Award. Pasquerella holds honorary degrees from Elizabethtown College, Bishop’s University, the University of South Florida, the University of Hartford, the University of Rhode Island, Concordia College, Mount Holyoke College, Bay Path University, and St. Mary’s College and was named by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education as one of America’s top 35 women leaders. She serves on the boards of the Lingnan Foundation, the National Trust for the Humanities, the Coalition for the Common Good, and Handshake.

Dr. Terrell Strayhorn is an academic at heart. As the Associate Provost and Interim Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences; Director of Research, Center for the Study of HBCUs; and Professor of Education and Psychology at Virginia Union University. Terrell has an unapologetic commitment to conducting, marshaling, and translating scientific research for the purposes of advancing equity, removing systemic injustices, and improving the material conditions of our most vulnerable populations in society. He is President/CEO of Do Good Work Consulting Group, leading an awesome team, working with hundreds of colleges, universities, districts, and agencies in “moving the needle” on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging outcomes for staff and students.

Terrell loves to write. He has published 12 books and over 200+ book chapters, journal articles and other scholarly publications. He believes strongly in connecting research findings to addressing broader social problems and putting research to practice, thus, he frequently writes Op-Eds, letters to editors, and blogs. He’s a contributing writer for Entrepreneur, AllBusiness, Thrive Global, and Psychology Today.

Just as much as writing, Terrell loves sharing ideas with others. He has given hundreds of invited keynotes and lectures at 2000+ universities, schools, companies, churches, and conferences across the globe. What drives this passion is the ability to connect his research and talents to address some of the world’s greatest problems, especially in education.

On a more personal note, Terrell is an accomplished musician, vegan 🌿, and runner.

Deborah A. Santiago is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Excelencia in Education, America's premier authority on efforts accelerating Latino student success in higher education. As an innovator, thought leader, and educational visionary, she has led research and advanced evidence-based practices and strategies for more than 20 years. She has held leadership positions with education organizations around the country, including the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans and the Los Angeles Alliance for Student Achievement.

She co-founded Excelencia in Education in 2004 to inform policy, compel action, and collaborate with those ready to accelerate student success with an unapologetic Latino lens. Among her many contributions, Deborah has addressed federal legislative issues in higher education at the Congressional Research Service and informed program and policy implementation at the U.S. Department of Education. She also improved awareness and education opportunities for Latinos with federal agencies as the Deputy Director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. Among Deborah’s community efforts, she has provided program design and implementation for dropout prevention and parental engagement for the ASPIRA Association and translated data for community engagement at the Los Angeles Alliance for Student Achievement.

As CEO, Deborah leads Excelencia’s programming and engagement efforts, including expanding and leveraging community-informed research in improving educational opportunities for students, working directly with education leaders, and informing campus practices as well as state and federal policies. Driven by a deep desire to advance asset based, student-centered understanding of the needs and opportunities for the Latino community, Deborah is a sought-after speaker about Hispanic Serving Institutions, college affordability, and equity in higher education. Her work has been cited in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

She serves on the Advisory Board of TheDream.US. and the technical panel for the Carnegie Classification led by the American Council on Education.

Nikos Varelas is Vice Provost for Academic Programs and Effectiveness and Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Physics. Prof. Varelas’ research field is experimental high energy particle physics.  His research interests concentrate on precision measurements of Quantum Chromodynamics, the theory that describes the strong interaction responsible for the nuclear force; searches for more fundamental building blocks of matter beyond the quarks and leptons in the Standard Model; searches for large extra spatial dimensions, quantum black holes, dark matter; and on studies of the Higgs boson.  Prof. Varelas is currently working on the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. He was a member of the team that discovered the Higgs boson in 2012.  His group's technical contributions at CMS have centered on the development and operations of the Level-1 Calorimeter and High-Level Trigger Systems.

Prof. Varelas has served as the co-spokesperson of the Coordinated Theoretical-Experimental Project on QCD (CTEQ) Collaboration, member of the Executive Committee of the American Physical Society’s Division of Particles and Fields, Chair of the Fermilab Users Executive Committee, and Senior Fellow of the LHC Physics Center at Fermilab.

Prof. Varelas is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a University of Illinois Scholar.