Prairie View A&M associate provost to join Rice as ACE fellow

James A. Wilson Jr., the associate provost for academic affairs and director of faculty innovation and enhancement at Prairie View A&M University, has joined the President’s Office as an American Council on Education (ACE) fellow.

James A. Wilson Jr.

One of 39 ACE fellows, Wilson will observe and participate in key meetings and events, and take on special projects and assignments while under the mentorship of President David Leebron and other campus leaders. The program condenses years of on-the-job experience and skills development into a single year.

“I think what’s fascinating about being an ACE fellow is you get a chance to shadow a president and see how they interact with the university and all of the stakeholders,” Wilson said. “David Leebron is a phenomenal leader and after I interviewed with him I knew very quickly this is where I wanted to do my ACE fellowship, in part because he has internationalized Rice’s profile.”

After the fellowship year, Wilson will return to his home institution with new knowledge and skills that contribute to capacity-building efforts, along with a network of peers across the country and abroad.

Wilson joined the Academic Affairs Division at Prairie View in 2009 as director of the Honors Program. Under his leadership 98% of the honors students finished their degrees in four years and entered top-ranked medical, law and graduate schools. Wilson also established a Confucius Institute on the Prairie View campus in 2014 and launched a partnership with Xi’an International Studies University in China. He has sent students to study abroad in Ghana, South Africa, China, Korea, Taiwan, Costa Rica, France and Italy.

Established in 1965, the ACE Fellows Program is designed to ensure higher education’s future leaders are ready to take on real-world challenges and serve the capacity-building needs of their institutions. More than 2,000 higher education leaders have participated in the ACE Fellows Program over the past five decades, with more than 80 percent of fellows going on to serve as senior leaders of colleges and universities.

For more information about the ACE Fellows Program, click here.