Mission and Leadership

About President Ray

Elmhurst College's Thirteenth President

Dr. S. Alan Ray has written and taught on religion, on philosophy, on Native American issues and the courts. A former Roman Catholic seminarian and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Dr. Ray is a Harvard-trained student of theology and a scholar of federal Indian law. He came to Elmhurst after spending twelve years working in academic administration, first at Harvard Law School and most recently at the University of New Hampshire.

A thread of practical engagement runs through Dr. Ray’s varied career, and he likes his scholarship to be rooted in the actual concerns of the world. “I like big questions,” he says. “But I also like real answers.”

In his new job, Dr. Ray will be called on to lead a college that has been on a roll in recent years. The entering freshman class is the largest in the school’s history. College guides such as the Princeton Review and U.S. News & World Report offer rave reviews. Recent construction projects—an academic building, an environmentally friendly residence hall, and new woodland and prairie gardens to complement the campus arboretum—stand as visible signs of institutional progress.

None of which means Dr. Ray’s job will be easy. Demographic realities suggest that the boom in the college-age population that has contributed to growing enrollments at Elmhurst and elsewhere will not last forever. A faltering economy will complicate fundraising efforts. The institutional endowment will need to continue to grow to support the College’s mission and ambitions.

Dr. Ray says he wants to have a new strategic plan in place within his first year on the job, to be followed by an ambitious fundraising campaign. The goal, he says, is “to make Elmhurst the premier liberal arts college in the Chicago area.”

Dr. Ray also plans to encourage faculty research and scholarship, which he says make for more effective teaching. He wants to build international programs, and intends to work to “increase the endowment substantially.”

The new president points to Elmhurst’s tradition of combining the liberal arts and professional preparation when asked what first intrigued him about the College.

“We think about how the things we learn can be related to the world beyond college,” he says. “That’s unlike some liberal-arts colleges that have an almost monastic model of education, in which the real world is at some distance from learning. We don’t have the problem of reconciling reflection and action. Here, reflection and action have always gone hand in hand.”