The Federal Reserve Board of Governors has appointed Prairie View A&M University President Ruth Simmons to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’ Houston Branch board of directors.
The Houston Branch board consists of seven members, four appointed by the Dallas Federal Reserve and three by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. Simmons will serve the remaining portion of an unexpired term ending Dec. 31. As a board member, Simmons will provide input into regional economic conditions as part of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy functions.
Simmons, who grew up in Texas, came out of retirement when the Texas A&M University System appointed her interim president at Prairie View A&M, a historically black university, in 2017. She was named to the permanent role in 2018. She is Prairie View A&M's first woman president and was also the first black woman to serve as president of an Ivy League institution. She held the top spot at Brown University from 2001 until 2015. Prior to that, she had been president of Smith College, the nation’s largest women’s university, from 1995 to 2001; a vice provost at Princeton University; and a provost at Spellman College, a historically black college. During her time at Smith, the school launched the first engineering program at a U.S. women’s college.
It was Prairie View’s focus on reaching first-generation students that drew Simmons to her current role after retiring from Brown.
“Some students have access to an education in college that’s fairly brief. They enter a college and graduate in four or six years,” Simmons said in 2018. “Others come to college in bits and starts. They can afford a course at a time, or they can come for a full year, drop out and come back later on. Some aren’t able to finish. As a first generation college student myself, how could I want to do anything different than assist in that effort?”
Prairie View A&M is also Texas' second oldest institution of higher education and is ranked at No. 6 on the Houston Business Journal's 2019 Largest Houston-Area Colleges & Universities List with 9,516 students enrolled in the fall 2019 semester.
