Denise Merrill

Denise Merrill graduated from the University of Connecticut before serving Mansfield, Storrs and Chaplin as a representative since 1992. She is currently the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives. Merrill is actively involved in issues of higher and lower education, including chairing a legislative task force on education technology and spearheading the School Readiness and the Early Reading Success legislation in 1997 and 1998. For her work on these issues she was recognized by the Connecticut Library Association, the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, and the Connecticut Education Association. In 1995, she passed the "UConn 2000", a $1 billion program to refurbish and rebuild the campus of the University of Connecticut. In 2005 she was named by the National Conference of State Legislatures as Co-Chair of their Blue Ribbon Commission on Higher Education, a national panel of legislators formed to make recommendations regarding affordability and access to higher education. Representative Merrill was appointed to the National Conference of State Legislatures Executive Committee in 2006, and also serves as a Co-chair of the Appropriations Committee.