Aaron John Brumbaugh (February 14, 1890 [1] – February 25, 1983) [2] [3] was a higher education administrator and professor of education, and the sixth president of Shimer College.
Brumbaugh was born in Hartville, Ohio in early 1893. [3] He subsequently became a teacher and superintendent in local schools, before traveling to Mount Morris College in Mount Morris, Illinois, where he received his BA in 1914. [1] He served as the superintendent of the Mount Morris schools from 1914 to 1915, and as professor of English at Mount Morris College from 1915 to 1918. [3] In 1918 he received his MA from the University of Chicago, and was named Dean at Mount Morris College. In 1921 he became president of Mount Morris College, a position which he held until resigning in 1925.
Brumbaugh taught at the University of Chicago beginning in 1926, and completed his Ph.D. there in 1929 with a dissertation on the authority of school boards as defined by the courts. He became an associate professor in 1935 and rose to full professor the following year, holding that rank until his retirement in 1944. [3] In 1937, he became president of the American College Personnel Association.
In 1941, Robert Maynard Hutchins appointed Brumbaugh Dean of Students at the College of the University of Chicago. He had previously held the position of acting dean. Brumbaugh retired from the university in 1944 but remained active in professional associations.
As president of Shimer College in Mount Carroll, Illinois from 1950 to 1954, Brumbaugh presided over the transition of the Shimer curriculum from a women's junior college to a four-year coeducational Great Books college. He was the first president to preside over the school under its current name, as the name was changed from "Frances Shimer College" to "Shimer College" at the time that the school became coeducational. [4]
In 1955, Brumbaugh left Shimer to take a staff position with the Southern Regional Education Board in Atlanta, Georgia. He held this position until retiring for the second time in 1970. He and his wife then moved to Florida. [3]
Shimer Great Books School is a Great Books college that is part of North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. Prior to 2017, Shimer was an independent, accredited college on the south side of Chicago, with a history of being in different cities in Illinois prior to that.
Mount Morris College was a religious college affiliated with the Church of the Brethren in Mount Morris, Illinois, USA. The original institution at this location was Rock River Seminary, which was founded by the Methodist Church in 1839. The Methodists closed Rock River Seminary in 1878 and subsequently sold the seminary grounds and buildings to the Church of the Brethren. The Brethren reorganized the school and reopened it in 1879 as Mount Morris Seminary and Collegiate Institute. It officially became Mount Morris College in 1884.
Martin Grove Brumbaugh was an American Republican politician who served as the 26th governor of Pennsylvania from 1915 until 1919. He is frequently referred to as M.G. Brumbaugh, as is common in the Brumbaugh family. He was president of Juniata College and the first education commissioner for Puerto Rico.
Thomas Kevin Lindsay is an American academic who briefly served as President of Shimer College. He was the Deputy Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities until December 2008. He was also the Director of the NEH We the People initiative, which funds programs, research and other activities that explore significant events and themes in US history and culture, and advance knowledge of the principles that define America. He serves as the Director of the Center for Higher Education at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Peggy Sullivan was an American librarian and educator. She was elected president of the American Library Association and was a scholar of the history of librarianship.
Shimer College was founded in 1852, when the pioneer town of Mt. Carroll, Illinois, lacking a public school, incorporated the Mt. Carroll Seminary with no land, no teachers, and no money for this purpose.
Frances Shimer, born Frances Ann Wood, was an American educator. She was the founder of the Mount Carroll Seminary, which later became Shimer College, in Mount Carroll, Illinois. She was also the sole proprietress of the school from 1870 to her retirement in 1896.
William Parker McKee (1862–1933) was an American educator and Baptist minister. He served as the chief executive of Shimer College from 1897 to 1930, a position known at the time as "Dean". During this period the school was known by turns as the Frances Shimer Academy, Frances Shimer School, and Frances Shimer Junior College. The second executive of the college following its founder Frances Shimer, Dean McKee was also the second longest-serving executive in Shimer's history. He oversaw the rebuilding of the campus following the fire of 1906, and the commencement of the junior college program shortly thereafter.
Raymond Benjamin Culver was a Baptist educator in the United States and the fourth president of Shimer College.
Don P. Moon is an American academic administrator, minister, and former nuclear reactor physicist. He was the president of Shimer College from 1978 to 2004, and has been on the faculty of Shimer College since 1967.
Francis Joseph Mullin, also often known as F.J. Mullin or Joe Mullin, was an American academic and the seventh president of Shimer College. He was raised Catholic, but became an Episcopalian as a teenager. He was key in engineering Shimer's brief period as an Episcopal-affiliated college; the school had previously had a Baptist affiliation.
Floyd Cleveland Wilcox was the third president of Shimer College, serving from 1930 to 1935. His leadership, though marked by controversy, saw the school through the most difficult years of the Great Depression. He oversaw the transition of the school's curriculum from a two-year to a four-year junior college program.
Albin Carl Bro (1893–1956) was a Christian missionary and educator, United States diplomat, and the fifth president of Shimer College.
The Mount Carroll Seminary was the name of Shimer College from 1853 to 1896. The Seminary was located in Mount Carroll, Illinois, in the United States. A pioneering institution in its time and place, the Mount Carroll Seminary served as a center of culture and education in 19th-century northwestern Illinois. Despite frequent prognostications of failure, it grew from 11 students in a single room to more than 100 students on a spacious campus with four principal buildings. Unusually for the time, the school was governed entirely by women, most notably the founder Frances Wood Shimer, who was the chief administrator throughout the Seminary's entire existence.
The dean of women at a college or university in the United States is the dean with responsibility for student affairs for female students. In early years, the position was also known by other names, including preceptress, lady principal, and adviser of women.
Humphrys Henry Clay Miller, or H.H.C. Miller (1845–1910), was an American attorney, and civic leader and three-term president of the village board of Evanston, Illinois. His first name is also frequently spelled Humphrey or Humphreys. He was the first Evanston mayor to be popularly elected.
Joseph Morris Rea (1846–1895), often known simply as J. Morris Rea, was an Iowa attorney and politician. He served in the Iowa State Senate from 1893 to 1895.
David Hilton Wheeler was a 19th-century American academic, newspaperman and college president, and also served as the US ambassador to Italy under the Lincoln administration. Active in politics, he was a fierce advocate of public education, which was then a core part of the Republican party platform. In the 1850s, he taught at Cornell College in Iowa and Shimer College in Illinois. He later taught at Northwestern University, where he served as interim president from 1868 to 1869. He subsequently became president of Allegheny College, serving from 1883 to 1888 and again from 1890 to 1893. In addition to his educational and political work, he was known for his writings on Italian history, including Brigandage in South Italy .