Dara Byrne

Dara N. Byrne, PhD, serves as the fourth dean of William E. Macaulay Honors College, part of the City University of New York system. Recognized as a 2024 Trailblazer in Higher Education by New York City & State, she reports directly to the Chancellor of The City University of New York. Byrne holds a pivotal role akin to that of a college president, overseeing academic and administrative affairs at Macaulay Honors College and sitting as a member of the CUNY Council of Presidents. As a visionary and strategic thinker, she has spent over two decades as a professor, researcher, and higher education leader developing innovative and enterprising student success programs that help fulfill CUNY’s century old promise to create a route out of poverty for first generation and low-income students. Prior to Macaulay, she was Associate Provost and Undergraduate Dean of John Jay College of Criminal Justice where she co-created a nationally-recognized program using artificial intelligence to boost John Jay’s senior graduation rate by 32 percent. This work was presented at the World Economic Forum at Davos (2020), Google IO (2023), New York City & State’s Education Summit (2023), Google’s inaugural Impact Summit (2024) and featured in Diverse Issues in Higher Ed, Hechinger News, Google Policy Forum, and The New York Times. She sits on the Board of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the Board of Visitors for Howard University’s Graduate School, the President’s Council of Valley Health Hospital System in Northern, NJ, and is a member of the Women’s Forum of New York. Dean Byrne earned her PhD in Rhetoric and Intercultural Communication from Howard University in Washington, DC. She is completing her MS thesis in emergency and disaster management from John Jay College of Criminal Justice.