Tuajuanda C. Jordan

Dr. Tuajuanda Jordan was elected to The Wills Group Board of Directors in 2018. She has served as St. Mary’s College of Maryland’s (SMCM) seventh president since July 2014. During her tenure, the Board of Trustees approved A Time for Rebirth, a new three-year strategic plan that builds on the College’s charter as Maryland’s only public honors college and the first of its kind in the nation. Under her leadership, the College added a new environmental studies major, added Bachelor of Science degrees in six majors for spring 2017, and achieved accreditation of the biochemistry program from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology – the first public institution in Maryland to hold such an honor. Among other achievements: the opening of African/African Diaspora House and Eco-House student living-learning centers, the addition of men’s and women’s varsity rowing teams, and the establishment of five major campus workgroups centering around initiatives for campus inclusion, diversity, and equity.

Dr. Jordan gained national prominence in the realm of science education with the creation of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science Education Alliance program and the launch of its first initiative, the SEA Phage program, which engaged novice undergraduates in research in genomics and bioinformatics. She has been widely recognized for her contributions to higher education and the larger community. Recently, she was named one of the Top 25 Women in Higher Education by the national magazine, Diverse Issues in Higher Education. In addition to serving on numerous national panels and boards, she was recognized as a Black Leader in Education by the AFRO (2017), was named as one of Fisk University’s Talented Tenth (2016), Purdue University’s Distinguished Women Scholars (2015-16), and as an Influential Marylander by the Daily Record (2015). She received the Torchbearer Award (2014) from the National Coalition of Black Women, Baltimore Metropolitan Chapter, and was inducted (2015) into the Zeta Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest academic honor society.