More Than a College Choice

Marybeth Gasman is the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Endowed Chair in Education, a Distinguished Professor, and the Associate Dean for Research in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. She also serves as the Executive Director of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity & Justice and of the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions.

Prior to joining the faculty at Rutgers, Marybeth was the Judy & Howard Berkowitz Endowed Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author or editor of 36 books, including Doing the Right Thing: How to End Systemic Racism in Faculty Hiring (Princeton University, 2022), HBCU: The Power of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), Educating a Diverse Nation (Harvard University Press, 2015 with Clif Conrad), Envisioning Black Colleges (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), Making Black Scientists (Harvard University Press, 2019 with Thai-Huy Nguyen), and her newest book Why Historically Black Colleges Matter: 25 Years of Research for Justice (Teachers College Press, 2025).

Marybeth has written over 325 peer-reviewed articles, scholarly essays, and book chapters. She has penned over 875 opinion articles for the nation's newspapers and magazines and is ranked by Education Week as one of the four most influential education scholars in the nation. Marybeth has raised over $27.5 million in grant funding to support her research and that of her students, mentees, and MSI partners.

She has served on the boards of trustees of The College Board and historically Black colleges – Paul Quinn College, Morris Brown College, and St. Augustine College. Marybeth currently serves as the Co-Editor of the flagship journal of the American Education Research Association, Educational Researcher. She considers her proudest accomplishment to be receiving the University of Pennsylvania's Provost Award for Distinguished Ph.D. Teaching and Mentoring, and serving as the dissertation chair for over 85 doctoral students since 2000. Marybeth is an avid photographer, loves to write, and believes balance and harmony are essential to achieving life goals.