Presidents of three national liberal arts colleges will comprise a panel to discuss issues relating to higher education on Thursday, April 7, as part of the inauguration activities for Illinois Wesleyan University President Richard F. Wilson.
The panel discussion, moderated by Wilson, will be held at 7 p.m. in Westbrook Auditorium of Presser Hall on the University campus.
The panelists are:
• Donald Harward, former president of Bates College in Maine;
• Russell K. Osgood, president of Grinnell College in Iowa;
• John A. Roush, president of Centre College in Kentucky.
“This will be a wonderful way to open our celebration of President Wilson's inauguration,” said April Schultz, associate professor of history and chair of the Inauguration Steering Committee. “We are honored to have these presidents join us and anxious to hear from them.”
The panel of presidents will begin three days of events culminating in the inauguration ceremony on Saturday, April 9, in the Shirk Center.
The panelists bring a wealth of experience in higher education and especially in liberal arts colleges.
Donald Harward served as Bates' sixth president from 1989 until his retirement in 2002. During his presidency, Bates created 22 significant new facilities and two dozen new academic programs. He was instrumental in instituting increased study-abroad programs, more support for student-faculty collaborations, and a renowned service-learning program. Bates increased its endowment from $53 million to more than $200 million and added 15 endowed professorships during Harward's tenure as president.
Prior to the Bates presidency, Harward taught and served at the University of Delaware, where he designed the University Honors Program, and then was vice president for academic affairs at The College of Wooster. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Maryland, and among his areas of published research are the foundations of mathematics, analytical philosophy, epistemology, and logic.
Russell K. Osgood became president of Grinnell College in 1998. He previously spent 18 years at Cornell University where he was the Allan R. Tesler Dean of the Cornell School of Law, when he was elected at Grinnell. During his tenure at Cornell, Osgood had worked to strengthen the Law School's international focus, by broadening the curriculum and the scope of the Berger International Legal Studies Program and by advocating greater opportunities for faculty to teach overseas.
A 1969 graduate of Yale where he received exceptional distinction in history, Osgood later graduated from the Yale Law School. He taught at the Boston University School of Law before joining Cornell.
John A. Roush was named the 20th president of Centre College in 1998. He brought 25 years of experience in higher education, most recently as vice president for planning at the University of Richmond. Roush earned a bachelor's degree in English at Ohio University's Honors College. He completed master's and doctoral degrees at Miami University. Active in athletics, Roush was Ohio University Scholar Athlete of the Year and three times earned Academic All-American honors in football.
Roush joined the University of Richmond in 1982 as executive assistant to the president and by the late 1980s had emerged as an institutional leader in efforts to create the Jepson School of Leadership. At Centre, Roush was instrumental in bringing the 2000 Vice Presidential Debate to the campus.
A reception will be held immediately following the presentation in the Merwin and Wakeley galleries in the Ames School of Art.
(S. Georgia Nugent, president of Kenyon College, had been scheduled to participate but was forced to withdraw in order to attend to urgent matters on the Ohio campus .)
