Robert Hazard Edwards

Infobox University President


width = 150px
name =Robert Hazard Edwards


caption =
order =13th
university =President of Bowdoin College
term_start =1990
term_end =2001
birth_date =1934
birth_place =
death_date =
death_place =
predecessor =A. LeRoy Greason
successor =Barry Mills
alumnus =Princeton University
Harvard University
residence =
profession =
website =http://library.bowdoin.edu/arch/archives/rheg.shtml
footnotes =|

Robert Hazard Edwards (1934-present) was the seventh president of Carleton College and the thirteenth president of Bowdoin College.

Career at the Ford Foundation and at Carleton

A graduate of Deerfield Academy, Princeton University, and Harvard University, Edwards came to Carleton in 1977 from the Ford Foundation, where he had worked since 1968 and had become the head of their Middle East and Africa Office in Pakistan. As president, he helped launch the "Science, Technology, and Public Policy" program and expand and remodel the school's library. When he left in 1986, he received an honorary doctorate of Humane Letters.

Edwards then returned to Pakistan, going to Karachi to join the Secretariat of His Highness the Aga Khan, heading the Department of Health, Education and Housing. He also served on the board of trustees of Aga Khan University from 1987-1990.

Career at Bowdoin

In 1990, he became president of Bowdoin, where he significantly changed the college's governance and residential life. In 1995, he merged all board members from Trustees and Overseers into a single Board of Trustees. The next year,the Trustees voted to phase out fraternities, immediately terminating the recruitment of new members, and to abolish fraternities entirely by 2000. The college acquired all fraternity chapter houses by the summer of 2000, to be absorbed after renovation into the college's new residential house system.

Additionally, the sizes of both the faculty and student body where expanded, from 130.8 to 154.8, and from 1410 to 1600, respectively. In the midst of a $135 million capital campaign starting in 1994 and ending in 1998 (with $136 million), the college's campus and academic programs were dramatically expanded. During his tenure, many Academic buildings were constructed or renovated included Druckenmiller, Cleaveland and Searles Halls, Memorial Hall and Wish Theatres, Hawthorne Longfellow Library and the Coastal Studies Center. Additionally, several new residential halls, a new student union, a new fitness center, and a new dining complex were built and several new programs were established including the Educational Technology Center, the Learning and Teaching Center, the Off-Campus Studies office, and the Coastal Studies Program.

In 1999, Edwards became a member of the board of trustees of Aga Khan University again. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000 and was succeeded by current president Barry Mills in 2001.

External Links

*http://library.bowdoin.edu/arch/archives/rheg.shtml
*http://apps.carleton.edu/campus/president/history/
*http://www.aku.edu/university/bot/rhe.shtml
*http://www.carlwiki.org/Robert_Edwards