Valerie Sheares Ashby began as the sixth president of UMBC on August
1, 2022. The first woman to serve in this role, she also holds a
faculty appointment in UMBC’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
Sheares Ashby joined UMBC from Duke University, where she had
served since 2015 as dean of the Trinity College of Arts &
Sciences. As dean, she led the development and implementation of
strategic plans that resulted in significant new investments in
faculty recruitment and development, philanthropy, and student
engagement, and a realignment of operations that enhanced services
and created operational efficiencies. Throughout, she consistently
advanced diversity, equity, and inclusion as imperative to
excellence in both teaching and research.
Prior to her tenure at Duke, Sheares Ashby chaired the chemistry
department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC)
from 2012 to 2015. As a faculty member at UNC since 2003, she held
numerous leadership positions and had experience at all levels of
academic administration. She served on UNC’s Arts & Sciences
Foundation Board of Directors and Research Advisory Council and
chaired the university’s Institutional Conflict of Interest Committee
and the College of Arts & Sciences Faculty Diversity Task Force.
She engaged in all aspects of the undergraduate educational experience
as director of undergraduate studies in the chemistry department, and
she directed the UNC National Science Foundation Alliance for Graduate
Education and the Professoriate. Sheares Ashby was instrumental in
UNC’s collaboration with UMBC to launch the Chancellor’s Science
Scholars Program, which was among the earliest replication pilots by a
research university of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program.
She began her academic career in 1996 as an assistant professor at
Iowa State University and was promoted to associate professor in 2002.
At Iowa State, Sheares Ashby served as a mentor for the Iowa State
University Program for Women in Science & Engineering, a summer
research program for undergraduate and high school students.
As a researcher, Sheares Ashby has focused on synthetic polymer
chemistry, with an emphasis on designing and synthesizing materials
for biomedical applications such as X-ray contrast agents and drug
delivery materials. She is the recipient of the National Science
Foundation Career Development Award, DuPont Young Faculty Award, and
3M Young Faculty Award, as well as numerous teaching and service
awards, including the UNC Chapel Hill General Alumni Association
Faculty Service Award and the Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished
Term Professorship for excellence in undergraduate teaching and
research. In 2022, Women of Color Magazine named Sheares Ashby its
Technologist of the Year.
She received her B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry from the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed postdoctoral
research at Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz in Germany as a
National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and NATO Postdoctoral Fellow.