A. Blair Knapp
A.B., M.A., LL.D., Syracuse University
L.H.D., Temple University
L.H.D., Trinity College
HH.D., Bowling Green State University
14th President
Denison University
Granville, Ohio
Citation awarded on Saturday, June 10, 1961
The panel of judges, representing the Board of Trustees, the Faculty, and the Society, waived the necessary regulations governing the selection of recipients this year in order to pay special honor to Denison’s 14th president, upon the completion of the first ten years of his administration.
In recognition of an American college president’s success in translating a college’s excellent academic potential into academic fact, The Society of the Alumni of Denison University confers upon Arthur Blair Knapp an Alumni Citation.
You have brought to your stewardship the high talents of bold, constructive thought upon the problems of education, the creative gifts to articulate their solutions, and the command to see them through to realities. Among the benchmarks of your first decade at Denison are a strengthened curriculum in liberal learning, further development of the Christian Emphasis program, greater distinction in the quality of teaching, necessary expansion of the physical plant, more efficient business practice for better cost controls and improved services, unparalleled rise in financial support, growing national recognition of her academic force.
The college’s sons and daughters, in honoring you, recognize that Denison is today among the leading small liberal arts colleges very largely because of the complex of qualities meeting in a president who ten years ago could see an even greater destiny in a distinguished past.
