Evan Dobelle

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Evan Samuel Dobelle, educator and public official, is President of the New England Board of Higher Education. Twelfth president of the University of Hawaii (2001-2004) and eighteenth president of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut (1995-2001), he was president and chancellor of City College of San Francisco from 1991 and president of Middlesex Community College in Lowell, Massachusetts from 1987.

Elected mayor of Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1973 (at age 27, their youngest-ever mayor) and 1975, Dobelle was also Massachusetts State Commissioner of Environmental Management and Natural Resources. In the Carter administration, he was U.S. Chief of Protocol for the White House with rank of ambassador. (His wife Kit Dobelle served later as Chief of Protocol and as Chief of Staff to First Lady Rosalyn Carter.) He was treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, was National Chairman of the Carter-Mondale Presidential Committee, and served on California Governor Ronald Reagan's commission for educational reform.

At Trinity, Dobelle orchestrated renewal of neighborhood blight, thus reversing declining enrollments.[1] At the University of Hawai'i, he backed initiatives such as unifying the system's ten campuses, establishing the Academy of Creative Media, building a new medical school, reforming financial and building practices, and strengthening Native Hawaiian programs.

A speaker and writer on education issues, particularly the economics of higher-education investment and the Creative Economy, Dobelle is known for promoting public-private partnerships and the "College Ready" model that helps students remain in high school, graduate, and then matriculate onto and succeed in college. The Dobelles reside in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.