Dr. Irma Becerra
Marymount University
7th President
At Marymount University, Dr. Irma Becerra has a plan. After increasing
graduation rates at Florida International University and improving
academics as provost at St. Thomas University, she spearheads efforts to
make Marymount a nationally recognized name.
“That’s the goal of our strategic plan called Momentum,” she shares. “I want
that to be my legacy at Marymount.”
The seventh President of Marymount University in Arlington, Va., Dr. Becerra
exiled Cuba at two years old. Her family moved to Puerto Rico, and at 15 years old,
she moved to Miami with her grandmother, who had been a wealthy woman in Cuba
and had started over in the U.S. as a maid.
“My passion for higher education is based on my own grandmother's
experience of having to leave everything behind and start again from nothing,” she
says. “She would tell me no matter what happens in life, no one can ever take away
your education.”
She enjoyed numbers and pursued degrees in mechanical engineering. She
worked as an engineer in charge of the reliability of the system power grid at Florida
Power and Light early on in her career, but something was missing. “I was
spending all that time in the computer room,” she shares. “I was coding and I missed
people, I consider myself a people’s person.”
Then, the company went through a quality management initiative and
announced that they were looking for a statistics corporate instructor. Dr. Becerra
jumped on the opportunity.
“I volunteered to teach for the company, one week every month,” she says. “I
have to say that it was at this moment that I fell in love with adult education.”
As a woman in a male-dominated field in the 1980s, where flexibility for
mothers was practically unheard of, Dr. Becerra decided to pursue her newfound
passion. She finished a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and started her mark
in academia.
An educator who began her career in the private sector and the holder of four
patents and copyrights, Dr. Becerra advocates for a STEM-educated workforce and
holds the mindset of a trained scientist and seasoned entrepreneur. Prior to
Marymount, she served as Provost and Chief Academic Officer at St. Thomas
University in Miami Gardens, Fla., and spent three decades at FIU in a variety of
positions that include Vice President, Vice Provost, Entrepreneurship Center
Director, and tenured professor in Management Information Systems. She founded
FIU’s Knowledge Management Lab and led major projects as principal investigator
at the National Science Foundation, NASA (Headquarters, Kennedy, Ames and
Goddard Space Flight Centers) and the Air Force Research Lab. She was also a
Sloan Scholar at MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research. In addition, Dr.
Becerra has authored four books and numerous journal articles in knowledge
management and business intelligence. She earned both bachelor’s and master’s
degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Miami and became the
first woman to earn a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Florida International
University (FIU).
Dr. Becerra has introduced several initiatives with long-lasting effects
supporting Marymount’s mission and vision for the future. This includes adding
market-driven academic programs that prioritize career preparation, overseeing the
transition to a new academic structure, acquiring The Rixey luxury apartment
building next door to Marymount’s Ballston Center and improving the university’s IT
infrastructure through the implementation of the state-of-the-art enterprise resource
planning application, Workday. She has also navigated the school community through
the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
To Latinas who want to take their careers and communities to the next level,
Dr. Becerra has some advice. “Don't take that no for an answer because if you have
it in your heart that it is a yes, then you should keep going and keep striving and keep
pursuing,” she says. “Always remember how important you are to others, other
students that are coming after you that are seen you as an important role model.
It's possible to pursue your career, your passion, and have a successful
family life. We can have both. I think that it does require some creativity. Not expecting
to be perfect at everything but doing the best in the things that are most important.”
Dr. Irma Becerra with students during move-in day. Fall, 2021.
16 www.latinastyle.com LATINAStyle V ol. 27, No. 5, 2021
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