Ruth Simmons

February 19, 2009

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Profile America for the 19th day of Black History Month. As president of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, Ruth Simmons is the first African-American to lead an Ivy League school. Daughter of a sharecropper, Simmons earned her Ph.D. at Harvard, became a dean at Princeton, and then president of Smith College. She was selected as president of Brown in 2001, and has been named by Time magazine as the best college president in the nation, and was rated by Newsweek as its Woman of the Year. Surveys show she is highly regarded by the student body at Brown. About one-in-five African-American adults have at least a bachelor’s degree and 1.2 million hold advanced degrees. This special edition of Profile America for Black History Month is a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Sources: Census Bureau, Facts for Features, CB09-FF.01
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/013007.html