Herman B Wells and the Legacy of Leadership at Indiana University

KENNETH GROS LOUIS

1963 was a good year to seek a faculty position in higher education. Universities were burgeoning with the influx of students born to World War II veterans, and the prospects for further growth seemed limitless. State financial support was high, with no end in sight. Thus, finishing my Ph.D. in English at the University of Wisconsin, I visited many schools at their invitation. At each place I went, I attended a reception where I was introduced to faculty in the department by their titles: Assistant Professor X; Associate Professor Y; Professor Z; etc. At Indiana University, however, I and other candidates with me were introduced to faculty by their first names, no matter their rank or age. I sensed something different about Indiana and Bloomington and thought, much to the surprise of my friends in the East, that I would go there for "a few years"—that was 43 years ago.	1
When I started at IU in the fall of 1964, the things I had sensed in the interview the year before turned out to be accurate: the campus was collegial, friendly, humane, understated, and, if such a word can be used about a campus, happy.	2
Kenneth Gros Louis in 1966 Courtesy of the Indiana University Archives
These characteristics owed a great deal to the personality of Herman B Wells, president of IU from 1937–1962, and university chancellor from 1962 until his death in 2000. Wells was an enormously generous person, one who valued every member of the academic community, from a custodian to the most senior and distinguished professor. He treated each with respect, reaching out to them as only someone with his deep regard for others could do. Wells and I became good friends (we also happened to share the same fraternity, Sigma Nu) when I myself became active in administration, first as chair of the English Department in the mid-1970s, later as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and then, from 1980 to 2001, as chancellor of the Bloomington campus and vice president for academic affairs for the university. I was called back to that position in January 2004 and served for two more years, after which the trustees gave me the singular honor of naming me University Chancellor, a title that had only been held by one person before: Herman Wells.	. . .