Joseph E. Aoun
2006–present
Joseph E. Aoun, an internationally known scholar in linguistics, became Northeastern’s seventh president in August 2006.
Aoun came to Northeastern from the University of Southern California (USC), where he served as dean of its largest college, the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences.
During his first year as president, Aoun articulated a vision for the university based upon several of the institution’s unique strengths. These include its signature cooperative and experiential education model, leadership in interdisciplinary research and scholarship, multifaceted partnerships with Boston and the region, and transformation over the last decade into a university with increasing global reach and impact.
To seize upon this momentum, Aoun has initiated an academic planning process that focuses on Northeastern’s distinctiveness in five key areas: experiential learning; fundamental and translational research; urban connections; global outreach; and creative, aesthetic, and ethical expression. The Academic Initiative unites faculty, students, alumni, friends, and partners in a shared vision for the university’s future, and provides strategic direction for the university over the next decade as it reaches new levels of accomplishment.
Aoun has a passion for engagement that reaches across traditional boundaries. Under his leadership, Northeastern’s emphasis on interdisciplinary research and scholarship will become its hallmark. Aoun’s vision for building productive relationships extends well beyond the campus, to communities throughout Boston, the nation, and the world. As one who has lived and studied on three continents, the president has high expectations for Northeastern’s capacity to impact societal issues on a global scale.
At USC, Aoun was the inaugural holder of the Anna H. Bing Dean’s Chair in the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences. He received his PhD in linguistics and philosophy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981, his Diploma of Advanced Studies in General and Theoretical Linguistics from the University of Paris VIII (in France) in 1977, and a master’s in oriental languages and literature from Saint Joseph University (in Beirut, Lebanon) in 1975. In May 2007, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion presented him the degree of doctor of humane letters, honoris causa.
Frank Palmer Speare
1898–1940
The son of a steamship builder and operator, Frank Palmer Speare headed the Boston YMCA evening program, which evolved into Northeastern University. As Northeastern’s founding president, he oversaw the launch of several of the university’s early schools: the evening law school, the now-defunct automobile school, the evening polytechnic school, the school of commerce and finance, and the cooperative engineering school. For forty-two years, Speare was an inspiration, a directive force, and the person who laid the groundwork upon which others advanced.
Carl Stephens Ell
1940–1959
Known as “Mr. Northeastern,” Carl S. Ell steered the university through a period of unprecedented growth, overseeing college and co-op development, student population increases, the expansion of evening education, and advances in academic status. Six new buildings were constructed during the Ell years: Science Hall (now Mugar), built in 1941; the Student Center Building and Alumni Auditorium, built in 1947; the library (now Dodge Hall), built in 1952; the physical education center, built in 1954; Hayden Hall, built in 1956; and a graduate center (now Churchill), built in 1959. Ell described himself and his administrative team as “twenty-four-hour men—seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year—who have thought Northeastern, slept Northeastern, and made great plans for Northeastern.”
Asa Smallidge Knowles
1959–1975
After working as a teacher and administrator at Northeastern during the 1930s, then serving in high-level administrative positions at several other universities, Asa S. Knowles returned to Boston in 1959 to assume the Northeastern presidency. He decentralized the university’s administration, achieved national prominence for the co-op plan and adult education, redoubled the university’s commitment to community service, expanded the physical plant, and changed Northeastern’s image from “technical school” to that of a nationally known professional university. Knowles both increased Northeastern’s size and enlarged its vision of what it could become.
Kenneth Gilmore Ryder
1975–1989
Credited with enhancing the liberal arts, Kenneth G. Ryder began as a history and government instructor at Northeastern in 1949, moving into the administrative ranks in 1955. During his presidency, the student population grew to 50,000; the operating budget nearly doubled; sponsored research tripled; the endowment quadrupled, to $127 million; a $43 million fundraising drive was completed; nine buildings went up; and construction began on the $34 million Snell Library. Ryder also began the campus’s “greening,” replacing concrete and macadam surfaces with expanses of landscaping.
John Anthony Curry
1989–1996
The only graduate of Northeastern to ascend to its presidency, John A. Curry, LA’56, MEd’60, boosted academic quality while making Northeastern a smaller, more student-centered institution. Despite financial constraints, Curry improved the university’s infrastructure with the construction of three buildings and the renovation of four others. In addition to dramatically altering the campus’s physical landscape, he oversaw the creation of a campus-wide computer network and led two major fund drives. A champion of tolerance and diversity, he deepened the university’s commitment to the city, promising scholarships to a hundred local sixth-graders who excelled in school. In 1993, he hosted U.S. president Bill Clinton at commencement.
Richard Middleton Freeland
1996–2006
A U.S. history scholar and the author of Academia’s Golden Age: Universities in Massachusetts, 1945–1970, Richard M. Freeland helped Northeastern achieve excellence as a national research university that is student-centered, practice-oriented, and urban. Formerly the vice chancellor for academic affairs at the City University of New York, Freeland guided Northeastern into the top tier of national research universities and transformed the university’s West Campus, overseeing construction of the architectural award–winning West Village complex—which includes residential, classroom, research, and office space—and the Behrakis Health Sciences Center.