MAE 2010 Volume: 5 Issue: 2 (March)

Grinnell College recently named Raynard S. Kington, currently the deputy director of the National Institutes of Health, its new president. Kington, a leading scientific researcher on the role of social factors as determinants of health, has previously worked exclusively at research institutions. Dr. Kington was unanimously elected by the trustees after an extensive nationwide search by a 14-member Presidential Search Committee, including representatives from the trustees, faculty, administration, student body and alumni. The committee considered a diverse pool of more than 200 candidates with remarkable talents and accomplishments from large and small public and private institutions as well as multiple academic disciplines. The trustees noted Dr. Kington’s exceptional record of achievement at NIH and at the RAND Corporation, including his leadership, policy direction and coordination of NIH biomedical research and research training programs at NIH’s 27 institutes and centers, and his community-based leadership and research in Los Angeles, Calif. He will become Grinnell College’s 13th president on August 1, 2010.

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken has been appointed the eighth president of Wheaton College. He will assume the presidency in July. Dr. Ryken, a 1988 graduate of the college, is the senior minister at the historic Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, where he has served since 1995. Dr. Duane Litfin, Wheaton’s current president, will retire in June 2010 after 17 years of service. He announced his intention to retire last March.

Steve Morgan, president of the University of La Verne, has announced plans to retire. Morgan, who is from Claremont, Calif., has served as the university’s president for more than 25 years. He will step down in the summer of 2011. His intentions were made public on February 18 in an announcement posted on the university’s Website.

President C.D. (Dan) Mote Jr., who has led the University of Maryland into the top tier of U.S. public universities, announced last month that he will retire on August 31. “As I prepare to leave the presidency, I am even more confident than when I arrived that the University of Maryland is set in just the right circumstances to become a truly great university,” he wrote in a letter to the campus. “A university becomes one of the great ones when, and only when, an ‘expectation of greatness’ is embedded in its culture. When an institution has this expectation, it will replicate this belief in every decision it makes—in who it hires, in what is taught, in how it is led, in what standards of achievement are expected, among others.”

Belinda Jones recently assumed the presidency of the Council of College and Military Educators. She currently serves as the associate project director and senior education analyst with Indtai Inc., handling Marine Corps Lifelong Learning and Marine and Family Services-related prime contracts. She is responsible for the oversight and management for contract educational professionals on all Marine Corps installations, serves as the primary point of contact for on-site human resource issues, acts as an advocate and coordinator for education training and planning conferences, and leads a headquarters’ Marine Corps team to support guidance and policy on educational and family services programs under the guidance and direction of the U.S. government. Ms. Jones has over 15 years of experience managing crossfunctional Marine Corps’ programs and educational affairs.

John E. Bassett, who has served as president of Clark University for the last 10 years, and his wife, Kay Bassett, were recently honored as the 2009 recipient of the Telegram & Gazette’s Isaiah Thomas Citizens of the Year Award. Mr. Bassett has been a key community and academic leader at the university, and his wife has been active over the years in the activities of the local Red Cross and the Women’s Initiative of the United Way of Central Massachusetts. She has also been a strong advocate for local cultural organizations. ♦

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