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2006 - Inauguration
of Robert Weisbuch
Robert Weisbuch's inauguration took place on April 28, 2006.
Dr. Earl Lewis of Emory University was the keynote speaker,
and Alice Fulton read poetry. Representatives of all three
schools, students, faculty, and staff spoke welcoming Dr.
Weisbuch to Drew. |
A list of events can be found on the President's
Office website
Inaugural Address Photographs
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1991– Inauguration
of Thomas H. Kean
April 20th marked the largest inaugural celebration in Drew’s
history, for Thomas H. Kean. Approximately 2,500 people attended
the brunch, around 6,000 people attended the ceremony; and an
estimated 3,500 attended the President’s Party in the
evening. Speakers included Lamar Alexander, then President of
the University of Tennessee and former Governor of Tennessee;
former Drew President Paul Hardin, at the time serving as Chancellor
of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Roger
Martin, CLA ’65, who was President of Moravian College.
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Inauguration
Program
Inauguration
Address "Ode
to Kean" Photographs
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1975 – Inauguration of Paul Hardin
Following a week of rain, Paul Hardin was inaugurated on Friday,
September 26 in Baldwin Gymnasium. He had been inaugurated twice
before at Wofford College and Southern Methodist University.
Designed not to suggest extravagance in a time of economic hardship,
Hardin’s less formal ceremony in 1975 focused on the campus
community and included a purposely limited academic procession
of delegates from other schools and organizations. Hardin himself
provided the day’s major address. The weekend events also
included an address by soon to be Dean of Drew University College
of Liberal Arts Robert K. Ackerman, varsity athletic contests,
tours to local U.S. bicentennial sites, a chorale and jazz concert,
a campus cookout, open classes and laboratories, and a Sunday
morning folk church service. |
Inauguration Address Photographs
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1961 – Inauguration of Robert Fisher Oxnam
The back porch and lawn of Mead Hall witnessed the inauguration
of Robert Fisher Oxnam (the school’s first non-alumnus)
as Drew’s eighth president on Thursday, Oct. 12, Founders
Day, a custom no longer honored. Its more than 2,500 guests
represented the largest gathering for an on-campus Drew event
at the time and involved an academic procession of 660, including
delegates from 430 institutions of higher education and 50 learned
societies. The delegate from Oxford University (founded 1133)
headed the procession. William Pearson Tolley, Chancellor of
Syracuse University, delivered the inaugural address, calling
for educational leadership, given the “undeniable need”
for more and better graduate education in America. Tolley was
an alumnus of Drew’s Theological School and the first
dean of Drew’s College of Liberal Arts. United Methodist
Bishop Herbert Welch, retired, then the oldest living Drew alumnus,
delivered the invocation. A presidential reception of guests
and delegates followed the event. |
Inauguration
Program
Article Photographs
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1948 – Inauguration of Fred Garrigus Holloway
Fewer than 4,000 invitations went out for the Saturday, Oct.
16, Founders Day inauguration of Fred Garrigus Holloway, the
last alumnus to be president. Umphrey Lee, president of Southern
Methodist University, provided the charge to the new Drew
leader before 140 delegates and a crowd of more than 1,000.
From Mead Hall’s back porch Lee spoke whimsically on
the “care and feeding of college presidents,”
lamenting the “lack of a School for College Presidents.”
In his response, Holloway pledged to continue the “adventure
in excellence” of Brothers College (later the College
of Liberal Arts), echoing a phrase coined for that school’s
opening in 1928 by first dean William Pearson Tolley. But
Holloway also surprised the gathering by announcing that Drew
would reduce enrollment in the College from 415 to 350. |
Inauguration Program Inauguration Address Photographs
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1929 – Inauguration of Arlo Ayres Brown
Founders Day, Oct. 17 was the ceremonial date for Arlo Ayres
Brown, the first man inaugurated as president of Drew, the
University (since the school’s name was changed from
Drew Theological Seminary to Drew University in February 1928).
The day actually began with the dedication of the Brothers
College building, part of the gift of Leonard and Arthur Baldwin
that established Drew’s College. A luncheon in Bowne
Gymnasium (now Bowne Theater), with two addresses by college
leaders, separated the two ceremonies before Brown was invested
by Leonard Baldwin, the newly elected president of the board
of trustees. |
Photographs
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1912 – Inauguration of Ezra Squier Tipple
Ezra Squier Tipple, inaugurated on Founders Day, Oct. 24,
had served as student speaker for his commencement at Drew
in 1887. A rainstorm had soaked the campus for several days
prior to the inauguration and stopped only minutes before
the procession stepped off. Forty colleges were represented
in the procession and gifts of the day included the seminary’s
badge of office and two old keys to the building. His oration
carried an evangelical tone and aroused choruses of Amen,
according to accounts. Later that day he laid the cornerstone
for Samuel W. Bowne Refectory, now S.W. Bowne Hall of the
Casperson School of Graduate Studies. |
| Article Photographs |
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1880 – Inauguration of Henry Anson Buttz
Henry Anson Buttz began his 32-year tenure as Drew Theological
School president, the longest of any in the school’s
history, with little fanfare. |
Photographs
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1873
– Inauguration of John Fletcher Hurst
John Fletcher Hurst became the third Drew president and the
last to serve while Daniel Drew, the school’s founder,
was alive. |
Photographs
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1870
– Inauguration of Randolph Sinks Foster
Randoph Sinks Foster began the shortest tenure in the Drew
presidency. He left to become a Methodist bishop. |
Photographs
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1867
– Inauguration of John McClintock
Drew officially opened Nov. 6, 1887, and the ceremonies in
Mead Hall included the investiture of John McClintock as the
first president. Covered in depth by reporters and sketch
artists from Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly (a rival
of Harper’s Weekly) and Newark and New York press (besides
Methodist periodicals from as far away as the Midwest), the
ceremony attracted nine railroad cars full of dignitaries
to Madison, including all nine bishops of the Methodist Episcopal
Church. The event featured five major addresses in the morning,
another six in the afternoon after a lunch. Bishop Edmund
S. Janes delivered a ringing call for academic freedom in
the school, while two other speakers debated whether the Methodist
Church wholeheartedly favored theological education for its
ministers. One of McClintock’s first acts was to order
the removal of the luxurious red carpets in Mead Hall; they
were deemed “unseemly in a seminary.” |
Photographs
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Content provided by Cheryl Oestreicher, Drew University Archives |
