Dr. Mark Becker is president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. He previously served as a member of its Board of Directors and as Chair of the Board for the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities. 

Prior to leading APLU, Dr. Becker served as president of Georgia State University, where he led its transformation from a formerly little-known “commuter school” into one of the nation’s premier urban research universities. Dr. Becker served as Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at the University of South Carolina and as Dean of the School of Public Health and later Assistant Vice President for Public Health Preparedness and Emergency Response at the University of Minnesota.  

 Dr. Becker was named one of America’s 10 most innovative university presidents by Washington Monthly, the Academic Leadership Award from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence in Higher Education from TIAA Institute. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

 Becker has been a Principal Investigator on research funded by National Institutes of Health and by the National Science Foundation, and he was a co-investigator on projects supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Aetna Inc, and Quality Care Research Fund. 

Becker attended Harford Community College in Maryland, earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Towson State University, and his doctoral degree in statistics from the Pennsylvania State University.