John M. McCardell Jr.

15th President of Middlebury College

When John McCardell was named the 15th president of Middlebury College in 1992, he was only the second president in the almost 200-year history of the College to be selected from the ranks of the faculty.

McCardell has been at Middlebury during a period in which about half of the school’s 23,000 living alumni have graduated. A 1971 graduate of Washington and Lee University, he did his graduate work at Johns Hopkins and then at Harvard where he received his Ph.D. in history in 1976. That same year he joined the history department at the distinguished Vermont liberal arts college.

During the past 32 years, in addition to his teaching responsibilities, McCardell has been dean for academic development and planning, dean of the faculty, provost and vice president for academic affairs and acting president.

McCardell brought to the president’s office an important understanding and commitment to the role of the teacher and scholar in academic life. He continued to teach despite the demands of the presidency. McCardell’s specialty is United States history in the 19th century with special emphasis on the Old South and on American historiography. In 1977, he received the Allan Nevins Prize from the Society of American Historians for the best written dissertation on an American subject. His dissertation was later published by Norton & Co. under the title of The Idea of a Southern Nation, a book that, after 25 years, continues to be one of the most cogent discussions of the rise of Southern nationalists and Southern nationalism in the mid-19th century.

As president, McCardell led a strategic planning effort that produced a 10-year plan for Middlebury. The plan took a comprehensive view of the institution and boldly projected a 15 percent increase to an enrollment of 2,350 by the year 2004, an addition of 30 new faculty, and a facilities plan for $200 million in new or renovated space (including a $47 million, 220,000-square-foot science center and a new library). In his “Vision for Middlebury College,” he articulated a case for “peaks of conspicuous excellence” in language, literature, international studies, and environmental studies, and developed a plan for committing new resources to these carefully chosen strengths. He also initiated the creation of a residential commons system that seeks to integrate student life in small, continuing communities of residential clusters that include living, dining, and faculty residences. He led a successful capital campaign, which closed its books on June 30, 2001, having exceeded its $200 million goal by almost $12 million, and a second mini-campaign that raised $40 million during the academic year 2002-03. He stepped down from the presidency in June 2004. After a leave of absence he returned to the classroom as College professor in the fall of 2005.

In honor of his service as president, the board of trustees named Bicentennial Hall, the College’s science center, “John M. McCardell Jr. Bicentennial Hall,” created an endowed professorship that will bear his name upon his retirement, and established an endowed fund, the “John and Bonnie McCardell Scholarship,” which will support a student or students from the South who attend the College.

On January 1, 2001, McCardell was named “Vermonter of the Year” by the Burlington Free Press. He served as chairman of the Division III Presidents’ Council of the NCAA in 2003-04 and led a successful, comprehensive, division-wide reform effort.

In December 2006 McCardell founded Choose Responsibility, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to engage the public in informed and dispassionate debate over the effects of the 21-year-old drinking age. He has written and spoken on the topic and currently serves as director of Choose Responsibility and president of its board of directors.

McCardell currently serves as chairman of the board of directors of the National Bank of Middlebury; as a director of the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar in Richmond, Virginia; as a trustee of Vermont Public Radio; as a trustee of Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia; and, as of February 2008, a trustee of Washington and Lee University.

The Maryland native is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Omicron Delta Kappa and has been honored with grants and fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute for Southern Studies.

John and his wife Bonnie live in Cornwall. They have two sons, John, age 25, and James, age 21.

— January 2008