Dale Knobel

Dale T. Knobel has served since 1998 as the 19th president of Denison University. Under President Knobel’s leadership, Denison recently completed an ambitious Higher Ground comprehensive campaign which generated $178 million for student aid, endowed faculty positions, extensive new campus facilities, and both curricular and student life programming.

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.  

President Knobel came to Denison from Southwestern University in Texas, where he was provost and dean of the faculty. Previously, he served Texas A&M University as associate provost for undergraduate programs and as executive director of honors programs. He is the recipient of Texas A&M's Faculty Distinguished Achievement Award.

Knobel earned a bachelor of arts, cum laude and with 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 serves as chair of Ohio Campus Compact, the collegiate service-learning consortium; as past chair of the Great Lakes Colleges Association; as president of the North Coast Athletic Conference; and as trustee of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Ohio. Following a term on the NCAA Division III President's Council, Dr. Knobel joined the NCAA Division III Membership Committee. Knobel is currently in his second period of service on the American Council of Education’s Commission on Women in Higher Education and in 2010 was elected to the Board of Directors of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.