Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez’s distinguished career spans both academia and the public sector: He is a scholar, teacher, administrator and former Cabinet secretary for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
Dr. Matos Rodríguez is a dedicated champion of accessibility, inclusion and excellence in higher education. He built a diverse team of tested leaders to serve on his cabinet, and as administrators. During his first year in office, he appointed pioneering leaders such as Dr. S. David Wu, as president of Baruch College, who became the first Asian-American to serve as a college president at CUNY starting in July 2020. In keeping with his ambition to grow access for traditionally underrepresented firms to CUNY, he unveiled a comprehensive plan to bolster business opportunities for firms owned by women, minorities and service-disabled veterans.
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Responding to the crisis of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, Dr. Matos Rodríguez oversaw within a week the transition of nearly all of CUNY’s 50,000 course sections to distance education. To ensure the success of CUNY students who lacked the resources to participate in distance modalities, the University quickly purchased thousands of laptops and tablets, and paused classes on most campuses to safely distribute the devices to those who needed them.
In April 2020, the University announced the Chancellor’s Emergency Relief Fund to provide urgent support to students facing financial hardship amid the pandemic. Launched with $3.25 million in initial donations, the fund has provided grants of $500 each to thousands of CUNY students, including undocumented students who were excluded from financial relief by the federal government.
Prior to his appointment as Chancellor, Dr. Matos Rodríguez was president of CUNY’s Queens College from 2014 to 2019 and of CUNY’s Eugenio María de Hostos Community College in the Bronx from 2009 to 2014, making him one of a select few U.S. educators who has led both a baccalaureate and a community college.
While at Queens College, Matos Rodríguez introduced “QC in 4,” an initiative that helps students complete their bachelor’s degrees within four years; he significantly increased the college’s endowment; and he created accelerated graduate programs that allow students to save time and money as they work toward master’s degrees.
At Hostos, Matos Rodríguez and his leadership team were responsible for dramatically improving the college’s retention and graduation rates and doubling its fundraising. These accomplishments made Hostos one of the finalists for the prestigious Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence in 2014.
From 2006 to 2008, Matos Rodríguez served as Puerto Rico’s Cabinet secretary of the Department of Family Services. In this position, he formulated public policy and administered service delivery in such programs as Child Support Enforcement, Adoption and Foster Care, and Child and Elderly Protection. He oversaw a $2.3 billion budget and over 11,000 employees. Earlier, he had been Senior Social Welfare and Health Advisor to the Governor of Puerto Rico.
A cum laude graduate in Latin American Studies from Yale University, Matos Rodríguez received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. He has taught at Yale, Northeastern University, Boston College, the Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico, City College and Hunter College, and was affiliated with the History department at the CUNY Graduate Center. At Hunter, he also directed the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, one of the largest and most important Latino research centers in the United States.
Dr. Matos Rodríguez has used his extensive regional and national networks and board memberships to advance the visibility and recognition of CUNY. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Chancellor sits on the governing board of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU). In 2021, he joined the board of the Association for a Better New York (ABNY) and was named co-chair of the New York City Regional Economic Development Council (NYCREDC). He also serves on the boards of Phipps Houses and the United Way of New York City, and he is a member of the Research Alliance for New York City Schools steering committee. In 2020, the Chancellor was named by the American Council on Education (ACE) to a national task force focused on improving transfer of credit practices and to New York City’s Education Sector Advisory Council, which is to guide the reopening of schools and other aspects of the city’s pandemic response.
Dr. Matos Rodríguez has an extensive publication record in the fields of Women’s, Puerto Rican, Caribbean and Latino Studies, and Migration. He is the author of “Women and Urban Change in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1820-1868”; co-author of “Pioneros: Puerto Ricans in New York City, 1896-1948”; editor of “A Nation of Women: An Early Feminist Speaks Out / Mi opinión sobre las libertades, derechos y deberes de la mujer by Luisa Capetillo”; co-editor of “Puerto Rican Women’s History: New Perspectives”; co-editor of Blackwell Reader on the Americas; and co-editor of “Boricuas in Gotham: Puerto Ricans in the Making of Modern New York City.”
The Chancellor received the Albert J. Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association and his work has been published in such peer-reviewed journals as the Journal of Urban History, The Public Historian, Latin American Research Review, Centro Journal, Revista de Ciencias Sociales, and the Boletín de la Asociación de Demografía Histórica, in addition to having chapters in several anthologies. He was the founding editor of the series New Directions in Puerto Rican Studies, published by the University Press of Florida.
He is married to Dr. Liliana M. Arabía, a dentist, and they have two sons.