Dr. Lois B. DeFleur, fifth president of Binghamton University, is an eminent sociologist and an experienced administrator. She came to Binghamton in 1990 and has led the University through a period of funding challenges while enhancing strategic planning processes, developing innovative programs, and maintaining the tradition of excellence for which Binghamton is recognized nationally.

As Binghamton's president, DeFleur administers a public research university with more than 14,000 undergraduate and graduate students, five professional schools and a liberal arts school. Binghamton University is recognized as one of the top three doctoral research-intensive campuses in terms of graduation rates. Binghamton continues to recruit outstanding undergraduate students, with more than 90 percent of incoming students bringing advanced college credit and an incoming class with an average SAT score of 1275. Under DeFleur's leadership, new doctoral programs have been instituted in nursing, education, management and several engineering fields and an innovative general education program for all undergraduates was implemented which includes many opportunities for studying other cultures.

Binghamton serves as a model in providing global experiences for students. All students develop an understanding of and respect for different peoples and civilizations through academic programming and international experiences. These include a general education requirement in global interdependencies that integrates an international outlook into the classroom; additional foreign language requirements; the Languages Across the Curriculum (LxC) program, which helps students enhance their opportunities in a global environment; a dual-degree program with Turkish universities; and outstanding study-abroad opportunities. These innovative initiatives have earned Binghamton University five major awards for internationalization, including the inaugural Senator Paul Simon Award for Campus Internationalization from NAFSA: The Association of International Educators. Additionally, DeFleur was recognized with the 2007 Michael P. Malone International Leadership Award from NASULGC: National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges. In 2007, DeFleur was awarded the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education for her vision, dedication and innovative approach of educating students for a global age.

During Defleur’s tenure, the University has constructed two major academic buildings, doubled the size of its University Union, added several residence halls and one new residence community and completed a $33.1 million Events Center to help showcase its Division I athletics program. An additional $120 million in projects is underway, including construction of the University Downtown Center in the city of Binghamton, opening in August 2007.

As the University has grown, so has the need to keep pace with technology. Binghamton -- a member of the Internet2 consortium, whose primary goal is to create a leading edge network capability for the national research community -- continually upgrades its resources to provide students and faculty with current technologies including classrooms equipped with advanced instructor stations, Macintosh and Windows computers with multimedia capabilities, advanced overhead visualization, VCR, CD-ROM, laser disk player, slide projection, and more; a New Media Resource Center available to assist University faculty and staff in the investigation, design and preparation of information for research and teaching; use of Blackboard to facilitate faculty and student interactions; and distributed education initiatives such as EngiNet that allow students to earn degrees in non-traditional ways.

President DeFleur has significantly enhanced University relationships with external groups. Since her arrival at Binghamton, the University’s endowment has risen from approximately $8 million to $64.5 million and faculty research awards have increased 60 percent. Under her guidance, Binghamton completed its first-ever comprehensive gifts campaign more than a year early, and at 121 percent of its goal. Designated a New York State Center of Excellence in 2006, the University’s Small Scale Systems Integration and Packaging (S3IP) Center is a research and development organization that addresses research challenges in small scale system design, process development, prototyping, and manufacturing for academia and the microelectronics industry. The Center brings together partners from government, industry and academia, providing opportunities for collaborations that will advance microelectronics research and development.

The University has also developed partnerships and programs that contribute to state and regional economic development, including the Watson School’s Integrated Electronics Engineering Center, the federally funded Trade Adjustment Assistance Center and the High Technology Commercialization Center. A recent $10 million award won from the U.S. Display Consortium is helping Binghamton establish the Center for Advanced Microelectronic Manufacturing to create a unique roll-to-roll manufacturing process that will produce components more efficiently, at higher yields and at a lower cost than is common practice today.

DeFleur came to the University from the University of Missouri-Columbia where she had been provost. A former professor of sociology at both Missouri and Washington State University, where she was also dean of the College of Liberal Arts, DeFleur is an authority on juvenile delinquency in Latin America and has done extensive work in the fields of deviant behavior and occupational socialization.

She has chaired the board of directors of both the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges and the American Council on Education – two of the nation’s largest and most prestigious higher education associations. DeFleur was honored with the inaugural Council for the Support and Advancement of Education’s Chief Executive Leadership Award and recently was recognized with the Civic Leadership Award from the Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce.

A pilot and the owner of a Comanche 260, DeFleur has flown for more than three decades and served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy. A graduate of Blackburn College in Illinois, she received the MA degree from Indiana University and the PhD from the University of Illinois.