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Creation Date
1-25-1986
Description
Samuel Kern Alexander named seventh WKU president. He was installed on December 13, 1086.
The forty-six-year-old Alexander was born in Marrowbone, Kentucky, in 1939. He attended elementary and junior high schools in Bowling Green, then graduated from Jefferson County's Valley High School. His parents, two sisters and a brother all earned bachelor and master degrees at Western. Kern Alexander did his undergraduate work at Centre College, where he majored in English. Then he joined the family tradition by taking a Master of Education degree at Western in 1962 with a minor in history. He received a doctorate n education at Indiana University in 1965, then did postdoctoral work at Oxford University. His professional career began with two years of high school teaching, after which he accepted positions during the 1960s with the Kentucky Department of Education and then the U.S. Department of Education. In 1968 he joined the faculty of the College of Education, University of Florida, as an associate professor; two years later he was promoted to full professor. From 1972 to 1981, and again in 1985-86, he was director of the Institute for Educational Finance at the University of Florida, and in 1982-84 he also served as education policy coordinator in the governor's office.
Keywords
Western Kentucky University