News & Updates
The Board of Trustees of Illinois Institute of Technology, chaired by John W. Rowe, president and CEO of Exelon, has announced that Dr. John L. Anderson will be the eighth president of IIT. Anderson will assume his duties on August 1.
Anderson has served as provost of Case Western Reserve
University since 2004. Prior to Case, he served for 28 years at
Carnegie Mellon University, including eight years as dean of the
College of Engineering. In addition, he chaired the Carnegie Mellon
Department of Chemical Engineering and served as director of its
Biomedical Engineering program. Anderson belongs to the National
Academy of Engineering and is a fellow of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences.
His accomplishments include increasing the number of endowed chairs in engineering at Carnegie Mellon from five to 29, substantially improving the diversity of that college with respect to both women and minorities, and founding the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems. While he was dean, Carnegie Mellon was consistently ranked among the Top 10 engineering colleges in the United States. At Case Western Reserve University he led initiatives that resulted in a 25 percent increase in undergraduate enrollment while sustaining the high academic profile of the students. He also started a university-wide Office of Undergraduate Research, added resources to the university’s Division III athletic program (two conference championships this year), instituted a funded partner-hiring program for faculty recruitment, and promoted industrial partnerships through the Office of Research and Technology Management.
He has held visiting professorships at MIT, the University of Melbourne (Australia), and the Landbouwuniversiteit Wageningen (The Netherlands), has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has presented guest lectures at many other universities.
Anderson holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is married to Pat Anderson; they are active in the affairs of both Case Western Reserve University and the City of Cleveland. The 16-member Presidential Search Committee, chaired by John Rowe, consisted of IIT trustees, faculty, staff, and students, as well as a community representative. The committee conducted a national, nine-month search, resulting in 10 final candidates, each with a high caliber of distinction in the higher education community.
"In his interviews, Dr. Anderson was outstanding in his commitment to strengthening the engineering and hard science programs that constitute the historic core of IIT," Rowe said. "His focus upon increasing cooperation among all IIT colleges, his willingness to combine vision and personal attention in fundraising, and his thinking about ways to leverage the university’s position in the City of Chicago will help lead IIT to the next level.
"The Board of Trustees and I would like to thank our current President Lew Collens for his indelible imprint upon IIT," Rowe added. "Lew has fundamentally transformed the university and has laid the foundation to position IIT as a national leader in technology and entrepreneurship."
