Ralph Ford Email & Phone Number

Dr. Ralph Ford is chancellor of Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. As Penn State Behrend’s chief academic and administrative officer, he is responsible for all teaching, research, and outreach programs and activities of the college as well as overall campus operations.Dr. Ford has more than 25 years of leadership experience in higher education and industry. He joined Penn State Behrend in 1994 as a faculty member in electrical and computer engineering, subsequently serving as department chair. In 2005, Dr. Ford was named director of the college’s School of Engineering. Under his leadership, the school increased its national visibility as reflected in its rankings as one of the top 50 undergraduate engineering programs in the country by U.S. News & World Report. In 2013, Dr. Ford assumed additional duties as associate dean for industry and external relations for the college. In this role, he led Penn State Behrend’s open-laboratory model of industry-academic collaboration, which matches students and faculty members with private-sector partners for experiential student learning, applied research, and advanced product development. He also led the strategic partnership with Knowledge Park, the college’s 100-acre technology park.Prior to joining Penn State Behrend, Dr. Ford held engineering positions at IBM Microelectronics and Brookhaven National Laboratory. He is a past vice president and past member of the board of directors of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the largest technical professional society in the world. Dr. Ford was a Fulbright Scholar at the Brno University of Technology in 2005.

Listed skills include Research, Higher Education, Teaching, Strategic Planning, and 8 others.