President Dr. Eric J. Barron

ERIC J. BARRON

PRESIDENT FLORIDA STATE ’72 (B.S.) UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI ’76 (M.S.) UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI ’80 (Ph.D.)

President Eric J. Barron took the helm of Pennsylvania’s flagship public university on May 12, 2014, arriving from Florida State University, where he had been president for four years. No stranger to Happy Valley, he had previously spent 20 years of his career at Penn State, serving on the faculty of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and as dean of the college.Barron has nearly 40 years of leadership experience in academic administration, education, research and public service, and a track record as a talented manager of fiscal policy within large and complex institutions. In recognition of his expertise and leadership in higher education, he was named chairman of the Commission on Economic and Community Engagement (CECE) for the Association of Public Land-grant Universities (APLU) in fall 2017. He also serves on the Board of Directors for APLU, and Kish Bancorp, Inc.; the Board of Trustees for University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), and Universities Research Association (URA); and he is a member of the Knight Commission and the College Football Playoff Board of Managers.

As leader of Penn State, Barron oversees a research enterprise of more than $920 million and 24 campus locations. His responsibilities include oversight of two law schools, the internationally recognized online educational enterprise known as the Penn State World Campus, and a nearly $2 billion health enterprise, including the Penn State College of Medicine, the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, and the Penn State Health network, which extends throughout Central Pennsylvania. Penn State’s current enrollment is approximately 99,000 students, and the University boasts the world’s largest dues-paying alumni association in the world. During his tenure as president of Penn State, Barron has prioritized access and affordability; diversity and inclusion; student engagement; economic development; job creation and student career success; and technology. He is focused on helping Penn State fulfill its land-grant mission as a modern university, and supports “One Penn State 2025,” an initiative to reimagine student learning and support services across all campuses to boost student success, engagement with the University, and the efficient use of its resources.

Under Barron’s leadership, Penn State has achieved record-setting results in the University’s fundraising campaign, A Greater Penn State for 21st Century Excellence. Penn State has now raised more than $1 billion of the $1.6 billion goal. That puts the University among only 11 institutions in the U.S. to have raised $1 billion or more in three or more campaigns – including Harvard, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and Big Ten peers Illinois and Michigan.

Barron’s Invent Penn State initiative supports investment in entrepreneurship and innovation programs, tools and resources that accelerate the movement of great ideas to the marketplace and make a substantial economic development impact in Pennsylvania and beyond. Since its inception in 2015, Invent Penn State has partnered with the University’s campuses across the Commonwealth to open 21 innovation hubs available to the surrounding communities. These hubs have aided nearly 2,000 entrepreneurs; engaged more than 5,000 faculty, staff and students with 170 new product development projects; created more than 45 new companies in Pennsylvania with more than 424 new jobs and internships; generated nearly $800,000 in in-kind support; and brought in more than $4.5 million in external matched/leveraged funds.

Barron earned a bachelor of science degree in geology at Florida State in 1973 before moving on to the University of Miami, where he earned master’s and doctoral degrees in oceanography. At Penn State, Dr. Barron served as dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences from 2002-06, and as founding director of the Earth System Science Center, one of the first major initiatives focused on the total study of Earth as a system. He also had a simultaneous appointment as director of the Earth and Mineral Sciences Environment Institute. In 1999, he was named Distinguished Professor of Geosciences at Penn State.

An accomplished scientist with a long background in atmospheric research, Barron served as director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and as dean of the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Early in his career he was a postdoctoral research fellow and scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Co.