James R. Ramsey
Dr James R. Ramsey (born November 14, 1948) is the current president of the University of Louisville, located in the U.S. state of Kentucky. He became the school's acting president on August 1, 2002 and was named the permanent president on November 4, 2002.
Ramsey earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Western Kentucky University in 1970, and his Master of Arts and Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in Economics in 1972 and 1974, respectively.[1] He also served in the United States Army Reserve from 1970-1977.
Besides twice serving as Kentucky's budget director and working as the state's chief economist, Ramsey has also directed Kentucky's Office of Financial Management, been the state's chief Economic Analyst, and worked in the Office of Investment and Debt Management. He also worked as interim commissioner of Kentucky's Office of the New Economy. For his work and expertise in economics, he was named Kentucky's Distinguished Economist of the Year in 1999 and won the National Governors Association's Outstanding Public Service Award in 2001.
Ramsey has also been an economics professor at five other universities: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Loyola University, the University of Kentucky, Western Kentucky University, and Middle Tennessee State University.
Since becoming president, his administration's main goals have been to continue the school's large gains in research expenditures and endowment, and to improve infrastructure and aesthetics of the Belknap Campus. At the suggestion of his wife, Jane, a $1 million "Campus Beautification Project" was begun, which planted hundreds of trees on the roads around the campus and painted five overpasses with a UofL theme. In addition, he has worked with city and state officials to redesign the I-65 to provide better access to campus, improve Stansbury Park, and redevelop vacant industrial buildings near campus into upscale housing or athletic facilities.
Major academic accomplishments completed since he took office include an increase of over $200 million in the schools endowment, the doubling of federal research funding, an increase of two points in the school's average ACT scores, improvements in retention, and a rapidly increasing enrollment from areas outside the Louisville area. Major physical projects include the completion of a new nanotechnology research building, an expansion of the Ekstrom Library, three new student residence halls, new natatorium, lacrosse field, Indoor Football practice facility, and baseball stadium and adjacent sports medicine complex. Work is ongoing for a new heart disease research building and a state of the art medical laboratory on the school's medical campus.
Ramsey resides with his family in his native Jeffersontown, Kentucky.
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