Eamon Kelly

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Eamon Michael Kelly is the President Emeritus of Tulane University, having served as its president for seventeen years. He was born in New York City and attended All Hallows High School. He received his bachelor’s degree from Fordham University in 1958. After military service, he attended Columbia University from 1960 to 1965, where he earned his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in economics. Following graduation from Columbia, he joined the Penn State faculty at University Park, Pennsylvania.

In 1968, Kelly was appointed to U.S. government service by the President, serving as Director of Policy Formulation with the Economic Development Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce. He was later named Special Assistant to the Administrator of the Small Business Administration, where he participated in planning and initiating the federal government's first minority economic development program. Kelly joined the Ford Foundation in 1969 and served as Officer-in-Charge for the Office of Social Development, the Foundation's largest domestic and civil rights division. In 1975, he was named Officer-in-Charge of a $50 million social investment portfolio where, among other projects, he developed the nation's first private domestic satellite system; a by-product of this project was the creation of the National Captioning Institute to provide closed captioning for the hard of hearing.

In 1977, Kelly served as a special consultant to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he participated in drafting legislation that provided a $1.7 billion guarantee to prevent the insolvency of New York City. Later that year, he was appointed Special Assistant to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor. In that position, he successfully directed a government-wide investigation of the Teamsters' $1.4 billion Central States Pension Fund and led negotiations resulting in the Fund being transferred to private management. After leaving the Labor Department, Kelly returned, at the request of the United States Secretary of Labor, to direct efforts that ended a nationwide coal strike.

In 1981, Kelly was chosen to serve as the 13th president of Tulane University. In July 1998, he retired as president of the university. During his tenure as President, he was credited with leading Tulane into an unprecedented period of growth; Tulane increased its endowment sevenfold; the quality of the faculty and student body reached new heights; and the campus underwent dramatic changes with the construction of several new buildings and the renovation of many others.

In 1995, he was appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve on the National Science Board (NSB), the governing body of the National Science Foundation, which sponsors scientific and engineering research, develops and sponsors educational programs and helps guide national policy. In 1998, Kelly was elected Chairman of the NSB and re-elected in 2000.

Kelly is currently active on the boards of many professional, philanthropic, civic, and corporate organizations, and has received numerous awards, including the Torch of Liberty Award from the New Orleans Chapter of the Anti-Defamation League and the Caring Citizen for the Humanities Award from the International Council for Caring Communities.

Kelly is married to Margaret (Whalen), and they are the parents of four sons: Martin (deceased), Paul, Andrew, and Peter.