Rollins President Grant Cornwell Awarded Honorary Degree

Rollins College President Grant Cornwell received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from St. Lawrence University, his alma mater.

St. Lawrence Provost Karl Schonberg praised Cornwell as “a visionary leader of his alma mater and in the field of liberal education nationally and globally.”

“As a colleague and a leader of St. Lawrence,” says Schonberg, “all he did conveyed a sense of vision and striving intellectual curiosity. And just as important, a sense that the work we do, the enterprise of scholarship and education, should always be fun. Throughout his time at St. Lawrence—and I know in his career beyond this campus as well—Grant’s manifest belief that the life of a university should always be marked not only by rigor and intellectual ambition but also by imagination and joy has inspired his colleagues and students and made the institutions he has touched better.”

The honor is yet another milestone in a life dedicated to the liberal arts and experiential education. President Cornwell graduated from St. Lawrence with a double major in biology and philosophy in 1979. He holds an MA and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Chicago. Prior to coming to Rollins, he served as the vice president of St. Lawrence University and dean of academic affairs, as well as the 15th president of the College of Wooster in Ohio.