Cole named interim chancellor

Thomas W. Cole, Jr., former president of Clark Atlanta University, was named today as interim chancellor of the Amherst campus.

The Board of Trustees, meeting in Boston, ratified President Jack Wilson’s recommendation for the interim chancellor’s post.

Cole will begin his term as interim chancellor on Sept. 1 and is expected to serve about a year.

The trustees also appointed a 24-member committee to conduct a national search for a successor to Chancellor John V. Lombardi, who is leaving to become president of Louisiana State University system.

Wilson called Cole “a distinguished academic, a skilled administrator, and a seasoned leader well versed in the challenges and opportunities of higher education in the 21st century.”

Stephen P. Tocco, chairman of the Board of Trustees, called Cole “the right leader at the right moment for UMass Amherst.”

“I commend President Wilson for making this appointment. Thomas Cole is a nationally respected leader and educator. We have lofty aspirations for UMass Amherst and Thomas Cole is someone who has always aimed high and achieved at the very highest levels,” Tocco said.

Cole was the first president of Clark Atlanta University, a historically black, four-year school created in 1988 when Atlanta University merged with Clark College. He led the school from 1989 to 2002, when he retired and was named president emeritus.

During his tenure as president, the university grew from an initial enrollment of 3,150 students and an operating budget of $40 million to become the largest of the College Fund/UNCF institutions with approximately 5,200 students, 1,100 faculty and staff and an annual operating budget of $120 million. In recognition of his service of more than 30 years as a faculty member in the department of chemistry and president, the Clark Atlanta board named the $40 million research center for science and engineering in his honor.

In 2004, he was named president and CEO of Great Schools Atlanta, an independent, citizens-based local education fund in support of the Atlanta Public Schools. He served for two years and retired in 2006.

Cole began his professional career in 1966 when he joined the faculty of Atlanta University as assistant professor of chemistry. He served as chairman of the department of chemistry ((1970-79), Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Chemistry (1969-79), chair of the Atlanta University Center Chemists, and provost and vice president for academic affairs (1979-82). He also served as the first director of the Atlanta Resource Center for Science and Engineering (1979-82), the first of three centers established in the United States by the National Science Foundation.

He has held visiting professorships at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1971) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1973-74). He was a research scientist for the Procter and Gamble Company in 1967 and at the Celanese Fibers Company in 1974.

From 1982-86, Cole was president of West Virginia State College, where the telecommunications complex was named for him. In 1986, he was appointed the chancellor of the West Virginia Board of Regents, one of only four African-Americans to head a state system of public higher education. He returned to Atlanta as president of Clark College in 1988 and led the oversight and planning for the consolidation of Clark College and Atlanta University. He served as president of both institutions during the 1988-89 academic year until his appointment as president of Clark Atlanta University.

Cole’s professional activities and commitments include election as chair of the Council of Presidents of the Member Institutions of the College Fund/UNCF; the Atlanta University Center and the Black College Fund of the United Methodist Church. He has held memberships on the executive committee for Project Kaleidoscope, the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church and the executive council, Commission on Colleges, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. He currently serves as chair of the Board of Quality Education for Minorities and as a member of the boards of the MeadWestvaco Company, Andrew College, the University of Charleston, and Africa University in Zimbabwe. For three years, he was a senior associate with the American Council on Education’s Strategic Planning Project on assignment to the University of Zululand in South Africa. He was a member of the delegation of black scientists to visit China in 1984, the U.S.-China Committee delegation of college and university presidents to visit China in 1995 and a delegation to visit Germany and NATO headquarters in 1989.

An active citizen of Atlanta and Georgia, Cole is a member of the board of the Atlanta Area Council Boy Scouts of America. He has been a member of the advisory board of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change and Board of Literacy Action, Inc. He was scoutmaster of Troup 99, chair of the Charter Review Commission of the Atlanta Board of Education (2002) and Founding Chair of the Atlanta Committee for Public Education (1992). His past memberships include the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, Central Atlanta Progress, Georgia Research Alliance, Atlanta Educational Telecommunications Collaborative, Inc., Atlanta Action Forum and the Atlanta Rotary Club. He is a member of Cascade United Methodist Church.

His honors include a Southern Regional Fellowship; Woodrow Wilson Fellow at the University of Chicago; Danforth Associate; memberships in Beta Kappa Chi and Alpha Kappa Mu Honor societies; and listings in Who’s Who in the South and Southwest and in American Men of Science. Cole is a Distinguished Eagle Scout and recipient of the Silver Beaver Award. Other awards include Model of Excellence from Colgate-Palmolive Company, The Wiley Branton Award from The National Bar Association, The WEB Dubois Award from the NAACP and The Drum Major for Justice Award from the SCLC. He is a member of Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity and a life member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.

A native of Texas, Cole graduated summa cum laude from Wiley College in 1961 and earned a Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1966.

He holds honorary degrees from West Virginia State College, the University of Charleston, Allegheny College and Wiley College.

Cole is a second-generation college president. His father, the late Thomas Winston Cole, Sr., served as president of Wiley College from 1958-71.

He is married to Brenda Hill Cole, a Fulton County state court judge. They are the parents of two adult children.

More Information

Related story

August 15, 2007.

E-mail story to a friendPrinter-friendly version

/more talking points/