Dr. Shannon Márquez is the Dean of Undergraduate Global Engagement and Director of the Columbia University Center of Undergraduate Engagement (UGE). UGE enhances access and support for undergraduates to global opportunities and brings students and faculty together in a central location that creates a hub of global activity at Columbia, allowing students to better connect and learn about potential programs; faculty and staff to share their global and regional expertise and advice; and for the collaborative development, implementation and assessment of new and existing global programs and opportunities for global engagement across Columbia and around the world.

In addition to her senior leadership role in global engagement at Columbia, she is an adjunct professor of environmental health sciences in the Mailman School of Public Health. Prior to joining Columbia University, Dr. Márquez was the Vice Provost for International Development and a Professor of Global and Environmental Health; Civil and Environmental Engineering; and Biodiversity, Earth and Environmental Science at Drexel University, where she provided leadership in developing interdisciplinary global engagement initiatives and research partnerships with partners around the world; served as the Founding Director of the Drexel Global Health Initiative and the Dornsife Global Development Scholars Program which supported 6 month global health, study abroad, co-op/internship, research and experiential learning experiences that addressed the UN Sustainable Development Goals in 36 countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia; and developed and launched CHE—community health and environment in Cuba—a faculty-led intensive field course taught in Cuba, in partnership with the University of Cienfuegos.

An experienced senior international officer, global health scholar, “public health engineer”and environmental health scientist, she has garnered international recognition for her research focused on water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), the global water crisis and impacts on maternal and child health, and the environmental burden of disease in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Dr. Márquez has held distinguished international faculty appointments at The University of The Gambia and Gambia College School of Public Health; the Université Gaston-Berger de Saint-Louis in Senegal; as an Erasmus Mundus Scholar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Santé Publique (or EHESP, The French School of Public Health), and the University of Sheffield (UK) School of Health and Health Related Research (ScHARR); and as an Associate Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine-Center for Global Health. She holds a BS in mechanical engineering from Prairie View A&M University; a master’s in civil engineering from Texas A&M University; and a PhD in environmental sciences and engineering from the UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health.