Biography
Susan M. Collins is the Edward M. Gramlich Collegiate Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. She is an international macroeconomist whose research interests focus on understanding and fostering economic growth in developed and developing economies. Her work has been published in numerous professional journals. She edited or co-edited the annual Brookings Trade Forum from 1999 to 2007. Professor Collins served as the Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of the Ford School of Public Policy from August 2007 to July 2017. During her tenure as dean, the faculty expanded in size and intellectual breadth. Known for her collaborative leadership style, she fostered a climate of inclusion while increasing student, faculty and staff diversity. Credited for initiatives that significantly raised the School’s visibility, she also increased public engagement as well as the endowment. In addition, she led a major expansion in opportunities for students, including the launch of a thriving undergraduate program, and a funded global engagement program.
She is currently also a member of the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, a nonresident senior fellow in the Economic Studies program at Brookings, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She served as President of the Association for Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA) from 2013-2015.
Before coming to Michigan, she held positions as a professor of economics at Georgetown University, an associate professor of economics at Harvard University and a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund. She served as a senior staff economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during 1989-90. She received her B.A., summa cum laude, in economics from Harvard University in 1980, and her Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984. She is a Jamaican, who grew up in the United States, and became a U.S. citizen in 1997.