Lisa Vollendorf

President, Empire State University

Lisa Vollendorf, Ph.D., is the president of Empire State University, the State University of New York's leading online university and New York State's only public online university. A tireless advocate for public higher education, she believes in the power of education to drive social mobility and is deeply committed to access, equity, and inclusion.

Prior to SUNY Empire, she worked for 16 years in the California State University system as professor, department chair, senate chair, dean, and provost. She held faculty appointments at Miami University of Ohio and 
 Wayne State University. She also served as interim provost at the University of Northern Colorado.

Vollendorf has published extensively on women’s cultural history in early modern Spain and colonial Latin America, with a special focus on literature, Inquisition studies, and convent history.

She earned her B.A. in English and Spanish at Colorado State University, her M.A. in Spanish and Latin American literatures, and her Ph.D. in romance languages at the University of Pennsylvania.