Leadership

Terrence Cheng is president of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) system, which oversees 12 community colleges, four state universities and Charter Oak State College, and serves more than 72,000 students. The Board of Regents unanimously appointed President Cheng on May 7, 2021, and he began his presidency on July 2, 2021. He served as campus director of the University of Connecticut Stamford campus from 2016 to 2021, where he also served as a faculty member in the English department.

He has also held several academic and administrative leadership and faculty roles which include associate provost/assistant vice president, Academic Programs at Brooklyn College; and associate dean, School of Arts and Humanities, and chair, Department of English at Lehman College. Both institutions are part of the City University of New York.

Cheng, a first-generation student, earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Binghamton University and an MFA in fiction from the University of Miami, where he was a James Michener Fellow. He is the author of two novels: Sons of Heaven (2002), and Deep in the Mountains (2007), as well as numerous published short stories and essays. In 2005, he received a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.