Francis Leo Lawrence

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Francis Leo Lawrence
Education	St. Louis University (1959) Tulane (1962)
Title	President of Rutgers University
Salary	$287,000

Francis Leo Lawrence, born 1937, was the eighteenth president of Rutgers University, serving from 1990 to 2002. ^{[1] [2]}

Contents 1 Early years 2 Presidency of Rutgers 3 Selected publications 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Early years

Francis Leo Lawrence was born in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, where he graduated from Mount St. Charles Academy in 1955. Attending St. Louis University on a baseball scholarship, he was awarded a B.A. in French and Spanish (1959). He later earned a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in French from Tulane University in 1962. ^[1]

Before his appointment as President of Rutgers University in 1990, Lawrence was Provost at Tulane. ^[1] He is married to Mary Kathryn Long Lawrence. They have four children and thirteen grandchildren.

[edit] Presidency of Rutgers

Lawrence's twelve year tenure at Rutgers was marked by controversy. In 1996, a letter signed by over 100 senior faculty members was sent to the Rutgers Board of Governors stating that Lawrence lacked the qualifications to lead a major public university. He inherited, however, a distinguished senior faculty assembled by his predecessor Edward Bloustein, members of whom had earned awards (including the Pulitzer Prize, National Medal of Science, MacArthur Foundation "genius" prize, Guggenheim Fellowships, and Sloan Fellowships). During Lawrence's tenure, the high scholarly and intellectual reputation of this faculty kept Rutgers in the middle of the national rankings even as alumni and faculty protested that academic standards on campus were undergoing a measurable decline.

Pressure to bring about Lawrence's resignation mounted when a state commission study revealed that over 70% of New Jersey's top students were fleeing the state to go to out-of-state institutions. Admissions standards during his tenure declined substantially: in 1989, when he took office, Rutgers College accepted 38% of all applicants. By 1999, even against the background of a significant demographic bulge in the number of college-age students, over 60% of all applicants were being accepted.

A controversy occurred in 1994, when Lawrence urged that higher education should not be denied to minority students lacking the "genetic hereditary background to have a higher average" on standardized tests. ^{[3] [4]} Lawrence was also heavily criticized for having led Rutgers into the Big East conference, which marked the school's entry into commercialized Div IA athletics after a century of competition against schools such as Princeton, Colgate, Columbia, Lafayette, and Bucknell. Critics alleged that Lawrence's wholehearted commitment to big time athletics, shared by several powerful members of the university's Board of Governors, was the decisive factor in keeping Lawrence in office during the troubled years of his presidency.

Lawrence was chosen chairman of the Big East conference in athletics, as well as Big East representative to the National Collegiate Athletic Association. He also served as a member of the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education. Finally yielding to enormous pressure both from within the university and around the state, he resigned from the presidency of Rutgers in 2002. Awarded a University Professorship by the Board of Governors that had supported him, he has subsequently devoted his time to teaching and writing on leadership in higher education. ^[1]

[edit] Selected publications

• Molière,The Comedy of Unreason. Tulane Studies in Romance Languages and Literature, no. 2. New Orleans, 1968.

• The Influence of Rhetoric on Seventeenth Century French Literature. (Co-Editor) Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature, no.3 Seattle, 1975.

• "Dom Juan and the Manifest God: Molière's Anti-Tragic Hero." PMLA 93, 1978.

• Visages de Molière. (Editor, Author) Oeuvres et Critiques V.1: Paris: Editions Jean-Michel Place, 1981.

• Actes de New Orleans. (Editor) Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature/Biblio 17, Paris-Seattle-Tuebingen, 1982.

• Leadership in Higher Education: Views from the Presidency. Transaction Publishers, 2006.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Francis L. Lawrence at Rutgers University

Preceded by Edward J. Bloustein

President of Rutgers University 1990–2002

Succeeded by Richard L. McCormick