Lyn Ragsdale was Radoslav A. Tsanoff Professor of Public Affairs and Professor of Political Science. She served as the Dean of the Social Sciences at Rice University, the first woman to hold this position, from 2006 to 2016. Previously, she was the head of the Political Science Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago from 2001 to 2006, after having been on the faculty of the University of Arizona for 20 years. Professor Ragsdale received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin—Madison in 1982. She served as president of the Western Political Science Association and the co-editor of the Political Research Quarterly. She was a fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation and worked on Capitol Hill. She wrote five books and numerous articles on the American presidency and electoral behavior. Her most recent book (with Jerrold Rusk) entitled The American Nonvoter was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. Her book, Vital Statistics on the Presidency, in its fourth edition, received the best book award from the American Political Science Association’s Presidents and Public Executives section.