Sarah C. Mangelsdorf

President Sarah C. Mangelsdorf is an experienced academic executive known for her leadership in improving academic quality, advancing research, and expanding educational access and inclusion at some of the nation’s leading public and private institutions. Since she was appointed president in 2019, she has increased the University’s investment and growth in research and clinical enterprises, overseen record annual fundraising, led efforts to overhaul the institution’s human resources infrastructure and compensation programs, and created new leadership positions to better engage with the Greater Rochester community. In addition, she led the development of the University’s 2030 Strategic Plan, Boundless Possibility, to help define the University of Rochester as a global research university of the future.

President Mangelsdorf is a recognized leader among the institution’s peer institutions in the Association of American Universities, the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, the EDGE Consortium, and other organizations. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, President Mangelsdorf also holds the title of G. Robert Witmer, Jr. University Professor with an appointment in the Department of Psychology. Before joining Rochester, she served as provost at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, part of a tenure of leadership that includes serving as dean of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

A Pennsylvania native, President Mangelsdorf graduated from Oberlin College and earned her doctorate in child psychology at the University of Minnesota. She and her husband, Karl Rosengren, Professor, in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Department of Psychology, have two adult daughters and a son-in-law.