Frances Bronet, President of Pratt Institute, is a distinguished educator and leader at the forefront of interdisciplinary learning. She comes to Pratt from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, where she served as senior vice president and provost. Prior to that, she was acting provost at the University of Oregon after a decade as dean of the School of Architecture and Allied Arts at Oregon. She began her academic career as a design and structures professor in the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and spent 20 years teaching design as well as holding roles of associate dean and acting dean at the school.

Beyond her academic appointments, Bronet is an Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Distinguished Professor, past president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, and past chancellor of its College of Distinguished Professors. For more than two decades, she has been developing and publishing work on multidisciplinary design curricula, connecting architecture, engineering, science, technology and society, dance, and fine and electronic arts.

Bronet holds three undergraduate degrees from McGill University in Montreal, a BSc in Architecture, professional degrees in both architecture and civil (structural) engineering coupled with a diploma in management. After seven years in professional practice, she went back to get a graduate degree in architectural design from Columbia University. She was licensed by the Ordre des Architectes du Quebec in 1982 and has practiced in multiple offices in New York and Canada, including her own in Montreal.