Special Event - Navigating a Polarized Climate in Higher Education and Networking Reception (In Person Only)
2024-06-25 16:00 - 19:00 (America/Chicago) | Macalester College – Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center, 130 S Macalester St, St. Paul, MN, 55105, United States
SESSION RECORDING
To listen to a recording of this presentation, please visit the MPR website.
EVENT INFORMATION
Join us for a rich discussion exploring the role of higher education leadership in an intensely polarized cultural, political and social landscape. Recent protests and unrest on college campuses across the U.S. have surfaced questions and discourse about the appropriate role and responsibility of higher education leaders and their institutions during times of political and social unrest. Balancing various constituents’ beliefs and demands, ensuring safety on campus, and ensuring economic stability are sometimes competing priorities which introduce myriad challenges for leaders in this role. With our guest moderator Kerri Miller of MPR, we will hear from a panel of higher education leaders in Minnesota about how they navigate these challenges and their insights about the sector’s role in complex and ever-changing times.

4:00 – 4:15pm: Welcome

4:15 – 5:30pm: Panel Discussion

5:30 – 7:00pm: Networking Reception

SPEAKER INFORMATION

Moderator: Kerri Miller is host of Big Books and Bold Ideas and Talking Volumes through MPR News. She was the political reporter for KARE 11 television in Minneapolis-St. Paul before coming to MPR in 2004. She also writes the Thread newsletter.

Rebecca M. Bergman is Gustavus Adolphus College’s 17th president. Bergman is the first woman in the 152-year history of the College to be named president. Bergman, who served on the College’s Board of Trustees from 2007 to 2014, spent the previous 26 years at Medtronic, Inc., including the last 14 years as a senior executive. Her most recent position was Vice President of Research, Technology, and Therapy Delivery Systems for the company’s Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management (CRDM) business, where she led a research and development team of scientists and engineers. She previously served as Vice President, CRDM New Therapies & Diagnostics as well as Vice President, Corporate Science and Technology, where she directed biomaterials and biosciences R&D, new therapy development, and information management initiatives. Bergman earned her B.S. degree in chemical engineering from Princeton University and undertook graduate study in a Ph.D. program in chemical engineering and material science at the University of Minnesota. Bergman has received a number of Medtronic’s highest technical and leadership awards during her tenure with the company. She was elected as a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2001, and elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2010. She serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Sigma-Aldrich, on the Board of Directors of The Bakken Museum, and on a number of academic advisory boards. She previously served on the National Advisory Council of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institute of Health and the St. Catherine University Board of Trustees.

Dr. Suzanne M. Rivera is Macalester College’s 17th president. Having worked in higher education for more than 25 years, Dr. Rivera is an accomplished leader, instructor, researcher, and scholar. She is an advocate for social justice and brings a strong commitment to inclusion and equity to her role as president.
Prior to her appointment at Macalester, Rivera was the Vice President for Research and Technology Management at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She also served on the faculty in the Departments of Bioethics and Pediatrics at CWRU, leading original research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health, the federal Office of Research Integrity, and The Cleveland Foundation.
Rivera previously served as Vice President for Research Administration at UT Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Texas, where she also was a faculty member in the Department of Clinical Sciences, and at the University of California-Irvine campus as an instructor and administrator.
A national expert in research ethics, Dr. Rivera frequently is invited to speak about a variety of topics related to biomedical research and science policy. She has published numerous articles, essays, and book chapters that explore the moral dimensions of informed consent, use of human specimens, and protection of research subject privacy. She co-edited the book Specimen Science, published by MIT Press in 2017.
Dr. Rivera earned her BA in American Civilization from Brown University, a Master of Social Welfare degree from the University of California-Berkeley, and a doctorate in Public Affairs with an emphasis on health policy from the University of Texas at Dallas.
She and her husband, American Literature scholar Dr. Michael Householder, have two adult children, Antonio (married to Eliza) and Elena.

Rob Vischer was named the 16th President of the University of St. Thomas on January 1, 2023, after acting as interim president for the previous seven months, beginning in June 2022. He was inaugurated on May 12, 2023.
In nearly 10 years as dean of the St. Thomas School of Law, Vischer has helped leverage the law school’s mission to achieve critical objectives in student success and community impact. Over the course of his deanship, the law school has dramatically improved employment outcomes for its graduates, built a global student body by establishing partnerships with law schools in more than a dozen countries, redoubled its commitment to whole-person professional formation, maintained its top-25 ranking for scholarly impact, and made racial justice core to its mission. The Harvard Law School graduate was an inaugural recipient of the Minnesota Lawyer Diversity and Inclusion Award for his contributions to the advancement of diversity and inclusion in the practice of law.
Before entering the legal academy, Vischer was associated with Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago, where he practiced corporate litigation. He clerked for three federal judges: Judge David Ebel of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Joan Gottschall of the Northern District of Illinois, and Judge John Wiese of the Court of Federal Claims. He received his B.A. degree, summa cum laude, from the University of New Orleans, and his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
