DR. TUAJUANDA J ORDAN

President of St. Mary’s College

First, for local community members and visitors to our area, is the recently completed Commemorative to Enslaved Peoples of Southern Maryland. It is deeply meaningful to me and gives voice to the enslaved who once toiled on the grounds of the St. Mary’s College campus. I invite you to come visit the Commemorative, which was commissioned in 2019 and created by artists Norman Lee and Shane Allbritton of RE:site with erasure poetry by Quenton Baker. It honors those who once worked on our land from 1750-1815.

Continuing these important discussions on race equality, I have also joined with Maryland Humanities to patriciate in “Beyond the Statements: Leading Racial Equality in Humanities Organizations,” a free series on operationalizing racial equity work in the humanities field. Join me on March 22 at 10 a.m.

I launched the Mulberry Music Festival in 2019 to complement the popular River Concert Series, and am excited to bring the event back virtually this summer.

I also contribute to the St. Mary’s County National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Unified Committee for Afro-American Contributions (UCAC). I recently was the keynote speaker at Sotterley Plantation, and I read to any student willing to listen to me at Spring Ridge Middle School.

I was happy to join St. Mary’s College of Maryland in July 2014 as its seventh president. Prior to St. Mary’s College, I was a tenured faculty member and administrator at Xavier University of Louisiana and also at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon. I hold a Bachelor’s of Science in chemistry from Fisk University and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Purdue University.

Since joining the College, I have been honored to be recognized for my contributions to higher education and the larger community. Recently, I 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, I was recognized as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, named a Black Leader in Education by the AFRO, was awarded the Education Excellence award by the Southern Maryland Minority Chamber of Commerce, and received the inaugural CEO’s Excellence Award from the Prince George’s County Public Schools Foundation. I note these because I am not only humbled by them but hope they bring further honor to the collective efforts of our college.

My grandmother, Georgia Taylor, because she only had a thirdgrade education and she worked very hard to take care of her family. She always had such grace in the face of adversity.

She taught me it was always important to do your absolute best and make sure you take care of yourself and your responsibilities.

Incredibly important to me as a scientist, I spearheaded the creation of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science Education Alliance (SEA) program and the launch of its first initiative, the SEA Phage program, which engaged novice undergraduates in research in genomics and bioinformatics. This program has been implemented at more than 50 diverse institutions across the nation, impacted thousands of students and faculty, and resulted in numerous scientific and pedagogical publications.