Chancellor Javier Reyes Visits the College of Engineering
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On July 11th, Javier Reyes, the newly appointed chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, visited the College of Engineering.
Accompanied by dean of the college Sanjay Raman, Reyes met a number of faculty members and visited their laboratories—including the Robotics Lab, the Wave Energy Lab, the Microwave Instructional Lab, the Trapped Ions and Photonics Lab, and water testing labs—as well as the MIE Innovation Shop and M5 makerspaces.
Afterwards, Reyes commented that he “enjoyed visiting the College of Engineering as one of my first campus college visits and meeting their very impressive students, faculty and staff. It's easy to see why the Commonwealth's flagship public research university is a major contributor to the Massachusetts economy. We provide leadership in advanced materials and manufacturing, applied life and health sciences, data and computational science, the arts and creative economy, climate science and sustainability.”
Reyes is an economist who has devoted his career to the cause of public higher education. Born and raised in Mexico, he has made UMass Amherst history by becoming the university’s first ever Hispanic chancellor.
Reyes earned his bachelor’s degree in economics at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico City before earning PhD in economics from Texas A&M University. He began his career in higher education as a member of the University of Arkansas economics faculty, later becoming vice provost for distance education and associate dean for undergraduate studies and executive education at the Arkansas Sam M. Walton College of Business.
Immediately prior to joining UMass Amherst, Reyes was the interim chancellor of the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), where he’d previously served as provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs. He has also served as dean of the John Chambers College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University and as vice president for Startup West Virginia.
Reyes’ tenure as the chancellor of UMass Amherst officially commenced on July 1st.
(August 2023)