Since he became dean of the arts and sciences at Oberlin College five years ago, Sean M. Decatur has been well aware of Kenyon College, another private liberal-arts institution that is only 80 miles away and draws many of the same applicants.
In July, he will begin leading Kenyon, whose enrollment of 1,600 students is about 55 percent the size of Oberlin’s.
At Kenyon, Mr. Decatur says, his first order of business as president will be to gain an inside view of the Ohio institution’s operations and culture. Other items on his agenda include the obvious ones. Money, for example. At about $166-million, Kenyon’s endowment is modest compared with other highly ranked liberal-arts institutions—and a quarter of Oberlin’s.
Mr. Decatur, 44, also expects to continue standing up for residential liberal-arts education, which is weathering the periodic charge that it inadequately contributes to work-force vigor.
That is a discredited notion, contends Mr. Decatur, a chemist. In fact, he says, a liberal-arts education is not only “a powerful crucible for the transformation of students”; it is also an often-proven driver of national economic and cultural vitality. He notes that most employers say that they seek applicants with skills that are precisely those instilled by a liberal-arts education, such as critical thinking and adaptability to technological change.
Strikingly, he says, liberal-arts colleges disproportionately graduate future outstanding scientists. “That’s a story we don’t tell enough.”
Mr. Decatur’s emphasis on undergraduate research and his staunch support of the faculty appealed to members of Kenyon’s search committee, says one of its members, Royal W.F. Rhodes, a longtime professor of religious studies. Mr. Decatur was “my first choice from the get-go,” he says. “We saw him as someone who is reflective and articulate about what a liberal-arts education means, right now.”
The Oberlin dean also won the backing of Kenyon’s full Board of Trustees. He will succeed S. Georgia Nugent, who is stepping down after a decade in the post.
Mr. Decatur, a native of Cleveland, studied at Swarthmore College before going on to Stanford University for his doctorate in biophysical chemistry, which he got in 1995. He went to work at Mount Holyoke College, teaching chemistry, and from 2005 to 2008 was an associate dean of faculty for science there. Remarkably, he continues to pursue his research part time, for “revitalization.” His work focuses on protein malfunctions and disease.
While establishing a research program in biophysical chemistry at Mount Holyoke, he developed courses on such issues as the effect of technologies on poor populations. He believes that, given America’s changing demography, widening the appeal of sciences is “a big issue” in “growing and sustaining an informed work force.”
At Kenyon, about 20 percent of students classify themselves as not white, but only a few percent as African-American. Mr. Decatur, who will be the institution’s first African-American president, says all liberal-arts colleges face the same challenges when it comes to enrolling black students. But during Ms. Nugent’s tenure, he says, Kenyon made strides forward in racial and socioeconomic diversity, even as the cost of higher education increased.
Will he struggle to transfer his loyalty to Kenyon from Oberlin, where his wife, Renee Romano, is an associate professor of history and African-American studies? “Well,” he says, “there are ways in which the schools are rivals. They certainly are on the athletic field. But I think my choice of which side of the field to sit is pretty clear.”
