Jay Noren received BA and BS degrees from the University of Minnesota, MD degree from the University of Minnesota Medical School, and an MPH from Harvard University. He was a research fellow at the Harvard Center for Community Health and Medical Care, Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow at the National Academy of Sciences and U.S Congress, and a Winston Churchill Fellow in England and Scotland. He did his graduate and post-graduate work in health policy, health services research, public health, preventive medicine, and internal medicine at Harvard, the University of Vermont, and Michigan State University. He joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1976 where he served until 1999 as a tenured faculty member and in several leadership roles. In addition to his faculty appointments at Wisconsin, he has also held faculty appointments as professor at the University of Nebraska, the George Bush School of Government and the College of Medicine at Texas A&M University and Health Science Center, as a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota and the University of Washington, and Research Scholar at the National Institute of Health Policy.

Dr. Noren has previously served in several academic leadership roles including Founding Dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Executive Vice President and Provost at the University of Nebraska, Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin as well as Acting Dean for Allied Health and Associate Vice Chancellor at Wisconsin, Chancellor of Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, and President of the Health Science Center and Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs at the Texas A&M University System.

Dr. Noren's research and teaching emphases are health services research, health policy and health politics, health services leadership and management, health workforce, the role and operation of academic health centers, Native American health care, and executive education. He has engaged in extensive funded research projects and has authored numerous papers and book chapters. He developed and directed the Wisconsin Center for Health Policy and Program Evaluation and was an originator and director of the University of Wisconsin graduate program in Administrative Medicine.

Dr. Noren's international experience includes negotiated educational exchange agreements with universities in China and Lithuania and work in collaboration with educational enterprises in Africa and England.