President Mary A. Papazian 

Southern's president, Mary A. Papazian (right), has enjoyed a notable career as an educator, administrator and scholar of English literature.

Prior to coming to Southern, she most recently served as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Lehman College in The Bronx, which is part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system. Her first day at Southern was Feb. 1, 2012.

During her tenure at Lehman, Papazian was responsible for a $60 million budget and more than 750 full- and part-time faculty members and 200 staff members. She also oversaw the management, planning, development and quality control of all academic programs at the college.

Lehman is a senior liberal arts college, founded in 1968 and offering 76 undergraduate majors and programs and 46 graduate degree programs. Similar in size to Southern, it enrolled 12,115 students in fall 2010 (9,841 undergraduates and 2,274 graduate students).

At Lehman, Papazian helped articulate a strategic vision and long-term goals for the college and played a leading role in its implementation. She also supported efforts to build strong community relationships with the college and was a key member of Lehman's leadership team as it launched the college's first capital campaign.

Since becoming provost in July 2007, Papazian launched many initiatives, including creating the Office of Undergraduate Studies and Online Education, and developing increased admissions standards for freshmen and transfer students. In addition, under her leadership, Lehman created an annual Scholarship Day to showcase student research and scholarship, a faculty-led Assessment Council to guide the college's initiatives in student learning, and an annual Faculty Recognition Day to highlight accomplishments in the areas of teaching, scholarship and service.

Before joining Lehman's senior administrative team, Papazian was dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and professor of English at Montclair State University in Montclair, N.J., a position she held since August 2004. For the previous five years, she was associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., where she had been on the faculty of the English Department since 1988.

As dean at Montclair State, a comprehensive public university with 17,000 students and 500 full-time faculty members, Papazian oversaw many initiatives, including creating the Center for Writing Excellence, strengthening the partnership between the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the College of Education and developing degree programs in child advocacy and Asian studies.

Her scholarly work focuses on the 17th-century English poet and clergyman John Donne and has been published in a wide range of academic venues. Papazian's essay on Donne's Devotions won the 1991 John Donne Society Award for Distinguished Publication on Donne. 

Her book, John Donne and the Protestant Reformation: New Perspectives, was published by Wayne State University Press in August 2003. A second book, The Sacred and Profane in English Renaissance Literature, was published by the University of Delaware Press in June 2008. Papazian served the John Donne Society as secretary/treasurer from 1990-2005 and as president in 2006-2007.

A native Californian, Papazian completed her graduate and undergraduate education at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in English literature. 

Upon graduating summa cum laude with her B.A. in English, she was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She currently lives in Woodcliff Lake, N.J., with her husband, Dennis R. Papazian, a long-time professor of history and founding director of the Armenian Research Center at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, and their two daughters, Ani and Marie.