William Kerstetter

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William E. Kerstetter (1913–1996) led Simpson College from 1953 to 1963 and DePauw University from 1963 to 1975. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Dickinson College and a Ph.D. from Boston University, and was an ordained Methodist minister who spent most of his career in higher education. Before Simpson, he was a professor of philosophy at Hamline University. At Simpson, the college grew and started an exchange program with Oxford University. He became president of DePauw in 1963 and soon launched a major fundraising campaign. The campus buildings built during his tenure included Hogate Hall, a women’s upper-class dormitory, and a new science building that was later named the Julian Science and Mathematics Center in 1982 after alumnus Percy L. Julian. During his time, the formal link between DePauw and the Methodist Church was weakened. Although he was successful at fundraising, he was often seen as a weak president; he had strained relations with the faculty and avoided contact with students. In the late 1960s, civil rights and antiwar protests grew on campus, and Kerstetter withdrew from student life; in 1967 peaceful demonstrations culminated in a large sit-in at the President’s residence. He resigned as DePauw’s president in 1975 but stayed on as Chancellor, focusing mainly on fundraising, until retiring in 1978.