Dixon Ryan Fox

Term: 1934-1945
Academic credentials: A.B., A.M., Ph.D., Columbia University

Fox was devoted to making the college more worldly. He was uniquely equipped for this effort by the contacts he made while a Columbia history professor and as director at the American University in London. Fox invited distinguished lecturers to the campus, established an early form of a scholar-in-residence program and set up the Saint Andrew Exchange program. As an astute judge of academics, he made an extra effort to secure new ones with high potential.

Fox already knew a great deal about Union's history before he took office, and as the first professional historian to serve as president, he advanced Union's awareness of its past. He reinvigorated the annual Founder's Day celebration and began to focus it on a person or topic connected with Union's past (which is still the case today).

From the "Encyclopedia of Union College History"