In Memoriam: S. MALCOLM GILLIS

Curriculum Vita

 

Malcolm Gillis was President of Rice University from 1993-2004.  He is now University Professor at Rice University; he holds also the Ervin K. Zingler Chair in Economics.  He spent the first twenty-five years of his professional life teaching economics and bringing economic analysis to bear on important issues of public policy in nearly twenty countries, from the United States and Canada to Ecuador, Colombia, Ghana, and Indonesia. From 1996 to 2004, his career was devoted primarily but not exclusively to university leadership. He continued, nevertheless, to publish in his scholarly specialties. He resumed teaching and research in 2005. His research and teaching fall into three broad categories: fiscal economics, economic development and environmental policy. He has published more than seventy articles for journals and books. Individually or jointly, he has also written or edited eight books, including a widely acclaimed 1988 co-authored publication,Public Policies and the Misuse of Forest Resources. He also co-authored the leading textbook in the field,Economics of Development (5th edition, 2002), now available in five languages. 

 

Before coming to Rice, he was dean of the faculty of arts and sciences at Duke University (1991–1993) and dean of graduate school and vice provost, academic affairs, at Duke (1986–1991). From 1979–1984, he served as co-editor of Quarterly Journal of Economics, the oldest professional journal of economics in the English language.  He has earned many academic and service awards, including the Alumni Award Gold Medal from the Association of Rice Alumni (2004) and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal (2004). He has served on the executive committee of the Association of American Universities (1994–1995, 2002-2004), the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas (1998–2004), and the governing or advisory boards of many other academic associations and government agencies.

 

For-profit board memberships include, among others, AECOM, SCI, Cormedics and Nano-Tox. Nonprofit boards include Jacobs University Bremen (1998-2012), TAN TAO University in Vietnam (2008-2011), Pyongyang University for Science and Technology (2007-2011), and Catholic University of Chile (1997-2012). He was a founding member of all four of these Boards. He was for two years vice chair of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) (2008-2010). He served as Board chairman of the Vietnam Education Foundation from 2005-2008. He founded and later led several academic organizations including the Texas/UK Research collaborative on Nano and Bio Technology (2002), the Boniuk Center for the Study of Religious Tolerance (2004), and the Duke University Center for Tropical Conservation (1990). He was a Founding member and later a chairman of the board for BioHouston (2006). He is a member of the Board of Reasoning Mind, devoted to enhancement of instruction in quantitative skills. Dr. Gillis’s full curriculum vita, including publications, is available at:

 

http://economics.rice.edu/faculty/malcolm-gillis

 

A vitae containing his service and consulting activities is also available on the same site.