Dr. Marcia A. Grant is the Academic Planning Head of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) of the Aga Khan University. The FAS will be the flagship campus of the Aga Khan University and it will offer a residential liberal arts undergraduate education in the natural sciences, social sciences and arts and humanities. It will also develop a Graduate School offering advanced degrees in its strongest departments and interdisciplinary programs. Its students will be encouraged to participate in a rich selection of activities in the performing and visual arts, in volunteer work and in areas of social concern.
Dr. Grant received her BA in Political Science, Economics and Spanish Literature from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. She did post graduate work at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of the Tufts University, and wrote her Ph.D. thesis on the Nigerian Press and Politics for the London School of Economics. She has taught in areas of comparative and international politics at Oberlin College, and at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and at El Colegio de Mexico. As a member of the diplomatic service she served as Head of the Fulbright Program in Mexico and was a Cultural Attache in Paris. She returned to academe to the Director of the Edward S. Mason Program for Mid-Career Fellows at the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University. She has been a non-profit organization administrator in Barcelona and at the IIE in New York City. In 1999 she established a university for women, Effat College, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where she was Founding Dean. Prior to joining AKU she was based in Paris, where she was Dean of the American Graduate School of International Relations and Diplomacy and a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow. Recently in recognition of her contributions to the cause of education in some of the most challenging environments and her extraordinary leadership qualities, Dr. Marcia Grant has recently been bestowed an honorary degree of ‘Doctor of Laws’ on June 3, 2007 by Swarthmore College, USA, her undergraduate alma mater.