ISU President, Dr. Gregory Geoffroy

Gregory L. Geoffroy (pronounced JOE-free) became president of Iowa State University on July 1, 2001. He also holds the rank of professor of chemistry.  Dr. Geoffroy began his academic career as an assistant professor of chemistry at the Pennsylvania State University in 1974, advancing to associate professor in 1978 and professor in 1982. He was appointed head of the Department of Chemistry in 1988 and dean of the Eberly College of Science at Penn State in 1989.  In 1997, Dr. Geoffroy was appointed senior vice president for academic affairs and provost at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he also served as interim president for two months in 1998.

Dr. Geoffroy currently is a member of the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, which fosters communication and understanding between higher education and the FBI and other national security agencies. In Iowa, he serves as the Regents' representative on the Iowa Power Fund Board, a member of the World Food Prize Advisory Committee, a member of the Iowa Business Council, and President of the Iowa 4-H Foundation. He also serves on the board of directors of the Big 12 Conference. He was the conference's representative to the NCAA Division I board of directors and a member of the NCAA's Executive Committee from August 2005 to May 2008.

Only the second of Iowa State's 14 presidents to come from a chemistry background, Dr. Geoffroy is a nationally acclaimed researcher in organometallic chemistry. He has published more than 200 research articles in refereed journals; presented more than 200 invited lectures in the United States and nine other nations; is co-author of the book Organometallic Photochemistry, and has directed the work of 37 Ph.D. students and 15 post-doctoral scholars. He also has made special efforts to involve undergraduate students in research by providing opportunities for more than 50 undergraduate students to join his research group.

Dr. Geoffroy's teaching and research have earned him fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan and John Simon Guggenheim Foundations, visiting professorships to major universities in Germany and France, the Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award, and, in 1991, election as a Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has served in various leadership capacities in the Association for Universities for Research in Astronomy and in the American Chemical Society's Division of Inorganic Chemistry. In 1997 he was named an Alumni Fellow of the University of Louisville.

Dr. Geoffroy earned the B.S. With Honors from the University of Louisville in 1968. He served as an officer in the U.S. Navy from 1969 to 1970 and then earned his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1974 from the California Institute of Technology. He and his wife, Kathleen Carothers Geoffroy, have four children.