Eliza J. Reilly, Ph.D.
Executive Director
National Center for Science and Civic Engagement
Eliza Jane Reilly has over two decades of experience in
the design and implementation of programs to advance curriculum, academic leadership and faculty development. Her past positions include Executive Director of the American Conference of Academic Deans (ACAD) and Director of Programs at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), where she was the first Program Director for the SENCER initiative. From 2003-2013 Eliza focused on campus-based faculty development and interdisciplinary curricula through the directorship of the Center for Liberal Arts and Society at Franklin & Marshall College, where she also had a faculty appointment in American Studies. In 2008 Eliza was appointed Director of the Phillips Museum at Franklin & Marshall. With a .5M grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, she developed exhibition and faculty development programs that engaged faculty and students from the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences and made the campus museum a laboratory for innovative curriculum. Eliza holds a MA in the History of Art and a Ph.D. in U.S. American History from Rutgers University. She has been a founder and Senior Scholar in SENCER and the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement’s other funded initiatives since 2001, becoming Executive Director in 2015. From 2015-2020 she had a concurrent appointment as a Research Professor in the Department of Technology and Society at Stony Brook University and is currently a Sr. Fellow at the Institute for Learning Innovation and a Research Associate at Texas A&M-San Antonio. Eliza currently serves as the General Editor of the SENCER Models, publisher of the journal Science Education and Civic Engagement: An International Journal, an advisory board member of SENCER-ISE. She has served as PI or co-PI on grants from NSF, NEH, and the Wm. M. Keck Foundation. In 2018 Eliza was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Division Q) for her contributions to science education and civic engagement.
