About President Mangelsdorf

President Sarah C. Mangelsdorf

Sarah Mangelsdorf is an experienced academic executive known for her leadership in improving academic quality, advancing research, and expanding educational access and opportunities at some of the nation’s leading public and private institutions.

Since her appointment as president in 2019, she has increased the University’s investment and growth in research and clinical enterprises, led efforts to overhaul the institution’s human resources infrastructure and compensation programs, and created new leadership positions to better engage with the Greater Rochester community.

President Mangelsdorf has also overseen record annual fundraising, including the 2025 public launch of the most ambitious fundraising and engagement initiative in the institution’s history, the For Ever Better campaign. The campaign grows out of the University’s 2030 Strategic Plan, Boundless Possibility, which President Mangelsdorf introduced.

Both are designed to further elevate the University’s missions in research, care, education, creative arts, and student success as well as to engage campus, alumni, and international communities to demonstrate their leadership in a global future. In recognition of her leadership of the institution, she was appointed to a second term in 2024.

President Mangelsdorf is a recognized leader among the institution’s peer institutions in the Association of American Universities. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, President Mangelsdorf holds the title of G. Robert Witmer, Jr. University Professor with an appointment in the Department of Psychology.

Before joining URochester, she served as provost at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, part of a tenure of leadership that includes serving as dean of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

A Pennsylvania native, President Mangelsdorf graduated from Oberlin College and earned her doctorate in child psychology from the University of Minnesota.

She and her husband, Karl Rosengren, a tenured developmental psychologist in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Department of Psychology, have two adult daughters, a son-in-law, and a grandson.

She and her family enjoy learning about the Rochester region’s long history of civic, social, and entrepreneurial leadership, as well as engaging with the area’s opportunities for recreation and its vibrant art, food, and music cultures.