William Oxley Thompson

William Oxley Thompson (November 5, 1855 – December 9, 1933, born in Cambridge, Ohio) was the fifth President of The Ohio State University. Thompson was educated at Muskingum College and Western Theological Seminary. An ordained minister, Thompson spent the first half of his career in Presbyterian ministry. Upon his wife's death in 1885 he turned to higher education and became the first president of the Longmont Presbyterian College founded by the Presbyterian Synod of Colorado. He was appointed president of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in 1891 and served until 1899 when he resigned to become president of Ohio State.

His extensive service at Ohio State University (26 years) is honored with a larger-than-life bronze statue of President Thompson in academic dress, positioned in front of the eponymous main library (Thompson Memorial Library) on "The Oval" (the central greenspace on the Ohio State University campus). He is known for being involved in students education and social lives, presiding over the Ohio State win over Oxford University on October 10, 1924 in intercollegiate debate. Thompson's tenure at Ohio State was marked by two seminal events. The first occurred in 1906 with the passage by the Ohio Legislature of the Eagleson Bill, which formalized and legally locked in Ohio State's flagship role in the state's public system of higher education. The Eagleson law mandated that only Ohio State, among Ohio's public universities, would be allowed to offer doctoral education or conduct basic research. The second event, and the culmination of both the raison d'être for Ohio State's founding in 1870 and the aim of the Eagleson Bill in 1906, occurred in 1916 with Ohio State's election into the Association of American Universities.

External links

*findagrave|21202210

Further reading

* [http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/thompson.htm Bio from Muskingum College]
* [http://president.osu.edu/past_presidents.php Past Presidents of The Ohio State University]
* [http://library.osu.edu/sites/renovation/ William Oxley Thompson Library renovation]
*cite book
last = Pollard
first = James
title = William Oxley Thompson, Evangel of Education
publisher = Ohio State University Press
date = 1955
location = Columbus, Ohio
oclc = 758810