President

Jesse Truesdell Peck, the youngest of ten children of Luther Peck, was born on April 4, 1811 on a farm in Middlefield, Otsego County, New York. He was educated at Cazenovia Seminary and became a minister in the Methodist Church. He married Persis Wing on October 13, 1831, and in the following year he joined the Oneida Conference. In 1837, Peck became the head of the Gouverneur Wesleyan Seminary in New York. He moved on to head the Troy Conference Academy in Poultney, Vermont. In 1848, thanks to his fine record and his strong dedication to the Methodism, Peck was chosen to be the tenth president of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, despite having no formal college education himself.

Cornelius Prettyman was born on July 21, 1872 in Leipsic, Delaware, the son of the Reverend Cornelius Witbank Prettyman of the Dickinson class of 1872 and his wife Emma Elizabeth. He prepared at the Newark Academy in his home state and then entered Delaware College in 1886. That same year he transferred to Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he excelled in the modern languages, played tennis, edited for the Dickinsonian, joined the Union Philosophical Society, and pledged with Beta Theta Pi fraternity, of which his father had been a charter member. He graduated in 1891 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. His brother, Virgil, graduated the following year.

George Reed was born in Brownsville, Maine on March 28, 1846 as the tenth of eleven children of the Reverend George and Ann Hellyer Reed. His father died when George was 10 and after living with relatives he was reunited with his mother in Lowell, Massachusetts at the age of 10. He went to public schools in Lowell and worked farm jobs in the summers, including the memorable Civil War year of 1864 when he worked for some time at a "contraband camp" in New Bern, North Carolina, where 10,000 former slaves were sheltered.

He prepared for college at Wilbraham Academy in Massachusetts and went on to study at Wesleyan University from which he graduated with honors in 1869. Reed had funded some of his time at Wesleyan by preaching every Sunday, and, although he had been intending a career in the law, a year of theology at Boston University set him on the path of the Methodist ministry. He served his first pastorate in Willimantic, Connecticut, and went on to a series of posts in Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut over a span of nearly twenty years. In 1885, Reed received an honorary doctorate of systematic theology from Wesleyan University and a doctorate of laws from Lafayette College in 1889.

Howard Rubendall was born on May 14, 1910 in Williamstown, Pennsylvania to Charles W. and Lottie Row Rubendall. He grew up in the small ferry town of Millersburg near Harrisburg and attended Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania from which he graduated in 1931. While at Dickinson he was a member of Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity as well as the Omicron Delta Kappa honor society.

Following graduation Rubendall spent three years teaching at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. In 1935, he resumed his studies at the Union Theological Seminary, from which he received his B.D. in 1937. He then began to work in the position of chaplain and chairman of the department of religion at the Hill School until 1941 when he became the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Albany, New York. In 1944, he served as the president of the Northfield Schools, which included the dual positions as the headmaster of Mount Hermon School for Boys and president of Northfield School for Girls in Northfield, Massachusetts. He served in this capacity for seventeen years.

Boyd Lee Spahr was born on April 18, 1880, in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. There he grew up in the first block of South Market Street; his father was a local merchant. Young Spahr attended Dickinson College's preparatory school in nearby Carlisle, and then matriculated in the College proper with the class of 1900. Charming and athletic, he played tennis and joined Phi Kappa Sigma and the Belles Lettres Society. He was editor of The Dickinsonian and through other activities came to earn the nickname “Yodeler.”

Upon graduation he taught history for a year at the Preparatory School and published a collection of stories, Dickinson Doings. He then enrolled at the law school of the University of Pennsylvania, and he remained a Philadelphian the rest of his days.

Seemingly a figure from a Louis Auchincloss novel, Boyd Lee Spahr dominated Dickinson for much of the twentieth century. He served on the Board of Trustees from 1908 until his death in 1970; from 1931 to 1962 he was the Board’s president. Witty and urbane, he deftly governed the College, variously choosing and controlling trustees and presidents to shape Dickinson into an ideal he often declared, “to make Dickinson the best small liberal arts college.”

Ernest Vuilleumier was born on March 1, 1894 in New York City, New York. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1914 and obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Berne, Switzerland through a 1916 Rosengarten traveling fellowship. While he was there, the United States entered the First World War and Vuilleumier made his way to France to enlist with the 162nd United States Infantry in Bordeaux in 1918; he later served with the Chemical Service. He had begun his teaching career at the Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia before going abroad and he worked as an industrial chemist between 1919 and 1920 after returning.

Karl Waugh was born on November 30, 1879 in Cawnpore, India. He was the youngest of the seven children born to Reverend J. W. and Jennie M. Tinsley Waugh, both missionaries. Waugh received his early education in India and high schooling in Massachusetts. He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1900 as a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He received his master's degree the following year. He went on to Harvard in 1905 as a Thayer Scholar and then continued as a Weld Fellow until he earned his doctorate in 1907. Following his time at Harvard, Waugh served as an instructor in psychology and philosophy at the University of Chicago and Beloit College. Following war service as a psychologist with the rank of major in the office of the Surgeon General of the Army, he resumed his academic career, holding both teaching and administrative positions at Berea College and also the University of Southern California, where he was named dean of the College of Liberal Arts.