Nancy Cantor

Who is Nancy Cantor?

Nancy Cantor is the 11th chancellor and president of Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, and the chancellor-designate of Rutgers-Newark. She received her A.B. in 1974 from Sarah Lawrence College and her Ph.D. in psychology in 1978 from Stanford University. She became chancellor upon the retirement of Kenneth "Buzz" Shaw. Previously, Cantor served as Provost at the University of Michigan, and as chancellor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Cantor is married to sociology professor Steven R. Brechin, who teaches at Syracuse University.

Cantor is widely recognized for helping forge a new understanding of the role of universities in society that re-emphasizes their public mission. She is responsible for the development of Syracuse University’s vision, Scholarship in Action, emphasizing the role of the university as a public good. A central aspect of the pursuit of this vision is cross-sector collaboration in the City of Syracuse that has won acclaim locally and nationally. This includes the university's having been named among the first institutions to earn the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's classification as a university committed to Community Engagement, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York's having granted Cantor the 2008 Carnegie Corporation Academic Leadership Award.