Gloria Gibson to Be Inaugurated as the Seventh President of Northeastern Illinois University

Gloria J. Gibson will be inaugurated as the seventh president of Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago on September 13. The university, located on Chicago’s North Side, enrolls more than 7,000 undergraduate students and nearly 2,000 graduate students, according to the latest U.S. Department of Education data. African Americans make up 12 percent of the undergraduate student body.

Before being named president at Northeastern Illinois University, Dr. Gibson was senior vice president for academic affairs and provost at Morgan State University in Baltimore. Earlier, she was the dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Arkansas State University and later was a professor of communication and executive vice president and provost at the University of Northern Iowa. Early in her career, she taught at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Professor Gibson holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville. She earned a Ph.D. in folklore from Indiana University. Dr. Gibson is the co-author of Frame by Frame II: A Filmography of the African American Image, 1978-1994 (Indiana University Press, 1997).