Ronald Lewis, professor emeritus of history at West Virginia University, will speak as part of the David C. Hardesty Jr. Festival of Ideas on Nov. 5. His talk begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Mountainlair Ballrooms. It is free and open to the public.
Lewis is the Historian Laureate of West Virginia. His publishing career includes numerous journal articles, book chapters and essays, along with 14 co-edited books.
His most recent book, Aspiring to Greatness: West Virginia University since World War II, chronicles the emergence of WVU as a major land-grant institution. This book focuses on the modern historical developments that elevated WVU from a small regional institution to one of national prominence.
WVU’s growth mirrors the developmental eras that have shaped American higher education since World War II. The University’s history as an innovative, pioneering force within higher education is explored through its major postwar stages of expansion, diversification and commercialization.
Institutions of higher education nationwide experienced a dramatic increase in enrollments between 1945 and 1975. During this period, WVU followed the national trend by growing from a few thousand students to nearly 15,000. From 1975 to the early 1990s, expansion gave way to diversification. WVU was no exception, although its location in a rural state with a small minority population forced the University to work harder to attract minorities than institutions in proximity to urban areas.
The commercialization of higher education became a full-fledged movement by the 1990s. Like other public universities, WVU was called upon to generate more of its own revenues. The University’s strategic responses to these pressures reconstructed the state’s leading land-grant into the large complex institution it is today.
As the only modern history of WVU, Lewis’s book reaches into the archives of the president’s office and makes exhaustive use of press accounts and interviews with key individuals to produce a detailed resource for alumni, friends and supporters of the University.
As a professor of history at WVU, Lewis led undergraduate and graduate courses in American labor, West Virginia and Appalachian history. He served as the department’s chair for six years before being appointed Eberly Family Professor of History. He was subsequently named the Stuart and Joyce Robbins Chair in History, a position he held until his retirement in 2008.
Lewis received a bachelor’s degree from Ohio University in 1966. He went on to earn both a master’s and doctoral degree from the University of Akron in American history in 1971 and 1974, respectively. He taught at the University of Delaware for 11 years, prior to becoming professor of history at WVU in 1985.
Festival of Ideas is an annual speaker series that hosts high-profile intellectuals and public figures — along with WVU’s own academic superstars — in a series of lectures that engage the university community in important issues of the day. It’s organized by the Office of University Events.
For those unable to attend, a live webcast of the event will be available at http://webcast.wvu.edu . For more information, visit http://festivalofideas.wvu.edu and follow the conversation on Twitter at #wvuideas.
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CONTACT: Liz Dickinson, Office of University Events
304-293-8025, liz.dickinson@mail.wvu.edu
Follow @WVUToday on Twitter.