Office of the President

Dr. Dale Knobel is in his 10th year as the 19th president of Denison University. Since 1998, Denison has reached important milestones, including record student applications and admissions selectivity, increasing breadth of background in the student body, expanded student research programs, and enhanced educational technology. Under President Knobel's leadership, Denison's ambitious Higher Ground comprehensive financial campaign has helped the university endowment surpass $700 million and has generated new resources for student scholarships, endowed faculty positions, and both curricular and student life programming. Extensive new facilities, including the Campus Common, flanked by the Samson Talbot Hall of Biological Sciences and the Burton D. Morgan Center, an eight building student apartment complex, and major renovations and additions to academic buildings serving the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Fine Arts have marked Dr. Knobel's tenure.

President Knobel came to Denison from Southwestern University in Texas, where he was provost and dean of the faculty. He arrived at Southwestern after nineteen years at Texas A&M University. A veteran professor in the Department of History at Texas A&M, he entered the academic administration of the university in 1987 and successively served as executive director of honors programs and academic scholarships and as associate provost for undergraduate programs and academic services. In 1994, he was a recipient of Texas A&M's Faculty Distinguished Achievement Award, the university's highest faculty honor.

A historian of the United States, Dr. Knobel is a widely published scholar on the subjects of immigration and ethnic and race relations in North America. He is the author or co-author of books dealing with ethnic stereotypes and anti-immigrant hostility published by Wesleyan University Press, Simon & Schuster, and Harvard University Press. His numerous articles appear in scholarly journals ranging from the Journal of American Studies to the Western Historical Quarterly and Civil War History.

Knobel earned a bachelor of arts, cum laude and with departmental honors in history, from Yale University in 1971 and a Ph.D. in history from Northwestern University in 1976. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

President Knobel currently serves as chair of Ohio Campus Compact, the collegiate service-learning consortium; as chair of the Great Lakes Colleges Association; and as an executive committee member of both the Ohio Foundation of Independent Colleges and the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Ohio. He is immediate past president of the Five Colleges of Ohio consortium and of the North Coast Athletic Conference. Following a term as a member of the NCAA Division III President's Council, Dr. Knobel was appointed to the NCAA Division III Presidents/Chancellors Advisory Group.

Dr. Knobel actively participates in civic activities around the state of Ohio. He is a founding trustee of the Newark Midland Theater and a trustee of The Works: Ohio Museum of History, Art, and Technology, also in Newark. He sits on the board of directors of Lakeside, the historic Chautauqua community on Lake Erie, and he is chairman of the Lakeside Chautauqua Foundation.

Dr. Knobel and his wife, Tina, both natives of Hudson, Ohio, reside on the Denison campus at Monomoy Place, the official home of Denison's presidents, built in 1863.

President's Medalists 1985-2007