Hello everyone! Today, I'm blogging from the nation's capitol... Washington D.C., where I am visiting some friends at The George Washington University.
(GWU)
In honor of my current residence in the same city as the President of the United States, I will quickly describe three of my favorite Haverford alums whose days jobs were college presidents (besides of course, Steve Emerson, who has already been profiled).
The first one is Hunter Rawlings III, Class of 1966, and President of Cornell University from 1995 to 2003.
Hunter Rawlings III (Cornell)
There are two primary reasons why I love Hunter. One, he has a badass name. Two, because under his tenure, Cornell adopted a superb program of supporting undergraduates by building more on-campus housing, centralizing the dormitories of freshmen, and otherwise making the undergraduate experience at Cornell more like a liberal arts college (such as.... Haverford ;). He also began other intelligent initiatives such as building programs in areas such as bioinformatics, materials science, and genomics. Finally, he was, and continues to be, a noted classics scholar (PhD from Princeton) and also was the President of the University of Iowa for some time.
The next exciting profile in higher education leadership is Christoph M. Kimmich, who has a PhD in History from Oxford, is a member of Haverford's Class of 1961, and was President of Brooklyn College from 2000-2009.
Christophe M. Kimmich (Brooklyn College)
I really like Christoph for three major reasons. First, like Hunter, he has a cool name (Christoph? not Christopher... how chic). Second, he was president of the college that my dad and my uncles went to, so at a personal level I feel connected to him in two ways. Third, he has dramatically increased the quality of the education of Brooklyn College, which is great because it still represents an important pillar of college access in America.
My final favorite president is David W. Fraser, Haverford Class of 1965, graduate of Harvard Medical School, and President of Swarthmore from 1982-1991.
David W. Fraser (Swarthmore)
Although, I'm sure he did a lot of great things for Swat and I'm all for Tri-Co love, I really don't find helping our rival to be that cool. What I do find awesome is the fact that an expert on Toxic Shock Syndrome and Legionnaire's disease also happens to be a fabric basket designer. What a renaissance man! (Also, let's collectively note that while Swat needed a Ford to lead it, Haverford has interestingly enough never felt that a Swattie in its highest office was truly necessary ;).
Finally, I'm going to be honest, I really just chose this topic so I could post a video of GW's current president dancing to Shots.
