Leo Lambert
Leo M. Lambert, Ph.D. (born June 30, 1955, in Schenectady, New York) is the eighth President of Elon University, a private university located in Elon, North Carolina.[1]
President of Elon University
Since becoming Elon University’s eighth president in January 1999, Leo M. Lambert has advanced an ambitious agenda to establish Elon as a top-ranked liberal arts university. The academic climate of the campus has been strengthened through major investments in faculty development, library resources, honors and fellows programs for outstanding students, study abroad programs, undergraduate research, volunteer service and leadership education.
In 2001 Elon College became Elon University, and the NewCentury@Elon strategic plan was developed under President Lambert’s leadership. During his tenure, Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences, was established from three formerly separate divisions to emphasize the centrality of the arts and sciences at Elon. In addition, the School of Communications and the School of Education moved from departmental to school status. In 2006, Dr. Lambert led the drive to open the Elon University School of Law in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina.
New facilities constructed during President Lambert’s tenure include Carol Grotnes Belk Library, Rhodes Stadium, Belk Track and White Field, the six-building Academic Village, Ernest A. Koury Sr. Business Center, Ellington Health Center, The Oaks residence hall complex, Colonnades Dining Hall and the Colonnades residence halls, and several new residence halls and a commons building in Danieley Center. The university has expanded to include the 75-acre (300,000 m2) South Campus.
Leadership positions
President Lambert has assumed a number of leadership roles regionally and nationally, serving on the national and North Carolina boards of Campus Compact and as a founding board member and president’s council chair of Project Pericles, a national organization that encourages students to become civically engaged in their communities. Elon has twice been named one of the nation’s top universities for community service in the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll.
President Lambert has provided leadership on athletics issues, serving as a member of the NCAA Presidential Task Force on the Future of Division I Athletics and chairing the NCAA Committee on Athletics Certification.
In 2008, President Lambert was appointed to the Commission on Effective Leadership by the American Council on Education. In 2009, he was named a director of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), which comprises more than 1,150 public and private colleges and universities of every type and size.
Awards and recognitions
President Lambert has written extensively about post-secondary education and is co-editor of a book about university teaching, published by the Syracuse University Press in 2005. His alma mater, the State University of New York at Geneseo, awarded him an honorary doctorate of humane letters in 2002 in recognition of exceptional achievements in higher education.
In 1998, he was named by Change magazine as one of the nation’s outstanding young leaders in higher education. In 2005 he was awarded the Thomas Z. Osborne Distinguished Citizen Award, which is the highest honor bestowed by the Greensboro, North Carolina, Chamber of Commerce. He has also been named one of the Triad’s “most influential leaders” for five consecutive years by the Triad Business Journal.
Personal life
Leo M. Lambert married Laurie Fordham June 11, 1977. They have two daughters, Callie and Mollie. The Lamberts live at Maynard House, Elon University's presidential home.