By Mary Beth Roach
Before Jennifer Ross was asked to assume the position of interim dean of Syracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science in November of 2025, she held similar other leadership roles on the SU campus. Coming to SU in 2019, she served as the chair of the physics department from 2020 to 2024 and associate dean for creativity, scholarship and research in the College of Arts in Sciences from January to October of last year.
In these roles, she has been able to blend what she called her “internal drive to help” with her determination to achieve.
That desire to excel started in eighth grade, she said, when one of her math teachers told her she couldn’t do advanced math because she was a girl.
“That for me was very empowering,” she said. “To this day, I’m driven to do things and do them well because people don’t think I can.”
Although Ross is a physics professor in SU’s College of Arts and Sciences, she is heading up a different school on the campus and she said she believes that coming in from the outside can give a fresh perspective. In the first week as interim dean, she conducted a survey with two questions — what’s working and what’s not.
She quickly learned that one of the college’s strengths is its student support model, which she would like to see replicated throughout the university and nationwide.
Each student has three advisers, one focusing on the student’s health and wellness; one on career services and making sure the student is well-positioned for industry; and the third being the faculty, keeping them focused on curriculum. Another feature in this model that Ross wants to see expanded is the peer network of support, so that upper classmen can help mentor the younger students.
She, herself, was well-positioned to take on the interim dean position, when considering her background in the educational field. She will hold the post until June of 2027, while a national search for a permanent dean is conducted.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from Wellesley College in Massachusetts. After getting her doctorate at the University of California at Santa Barbara and doing postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania, she started an independent laboratory as a faculty member of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. This is where, she said, she learned a lot about leadership — sometimes by the workshops and courses she engaged in, but also by example. She cited a chancellor there who was “out and about listening to people and not being afraid of hearing what wasn’t working.”
When asked what prompted her to enter the academic field, she joked that she never left and a look at her credentials underscores that statement.
An award-winning biophysicist and well-recognized in her field during an era when there is a push for young women to enter STEM, Ross continues to be an advocate for diversity in the field. Furthermore, she has been part of the EUREKA! Summer program, working with middle and high school girls to teach them about science, health and self-care. She also co-leads the Syracuse University Physics Emerging Research Technologies Summer High School Internship Program (SUPER-Tech SHIP), which offers paid science internships at Syracuse University to students and recent graduates from the Syracuse City School District.
“We’re not there yet,” she said. But “my department is great. We have a large number of women. We’re just hiring another one. I’m so excited. Every subfield has female representation. It’s an exemplar department.”
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