“Bill Finch’s administration at Southwestern still has profound impact more than 50 years later, and for the faculty, staff and students who had the great honor of knowing him personally, his positive influence will endure,” said current President Jake B. In the 1952-53 academic year, Finch made the decision to end football at Southwestern due to rising deficits in the athletics budget. Buildings added to campus during the Finch administration include the Lois Perkins Chapel, Fondren Science Building, Ruter Hall, the Alma Thomas Theater and Fine Arts Center, the Kurth-Landrum Golf Course, and the four fraternities on Fraternity Row. Most of the campus roads were unpaved, the older buildings were badly in need of repair, and a protracted drought of the late forties and early fifties added dead and dying vegetation to the ramshackle scene.”ĭuring his tenure as president, Finch gave Southwestern a consistent sense of direction, focusing attention on the need for a strong and well-paid faculty, a selective student body and improved facilities. “The campus was dotted with one-and two-story buildings brought in by the previous administration to accommodate the expended post-World War II enrollment. “When the Finch administration began, only two new buildings had been built in over 20 years….,” Ralph Wood Jones wrote in his 1973 book on the history of Southwestern. He was 98.įinch served as president of Southwestern from 1949 to 1961, guiding the university through a difficult period of declining enrollment and revenue that followed the immediate post-war boom. William Carrington Finch, who served as the 11th president of Southwestern University, died June 13 in Nashville, Tenn.
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