Thomas E. Cronin

Dr. Thomas E. Cronin served as the president of Whitman College between the summer of 1993 and 2005. "Prior to that, he held the McHugh Professorship of American Institutions and Leadership at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. In 1991, he served as acting president of Colorado College.

"Cronin has been a scholar or writer-in-residence at the Aspen Institute, The Brookings Institution, The Hoover Institution, and the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. He has served on the White House staff as a White House Fellow and on the board of trustees or board of directors of the American Political Science Association, the American Leadership Forum, the National Civic League, Common Cause, the Institute for Educational Leadership, and the Center for the Study of the Presidency.

"He currently serves on the following boards or commissions: the Northwest Commission on Colleges, the Washington State Humanities Commission, the Institute for the Education of International Students, the Blue Mountain Land Trust, the Marcus Whitman Foundation, the Independent Colleges of Washington, and the Tax Policy Committee of the National Association of Independent College and Universities.

"Cronin has won several awards for his teaching and advising and was honored by the American Political Science Association with the Charles E. Merriam Award to recognize his outstanding contributions to the understanding of American politics. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Brookings, the Twentieth Century Fund and the Luce Foundation.

"Cronin earned his Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University and has taught at a number of colleges and universities including the Universities of North Carolina and California, Brandeis, Stanford, and Princeton, as well as at Colorado College.

"He is a past-president of both the Western Political Science Association and the Presidency Research Group, and is a past member of the Executive Council of the American Political Science Association. He has served on the editorial boards of five journals and has authored or co-authored several dozen professional articles. He is author, co-author, or editor of several books, including Direct Democracy (Harvard, 1989); Government by the People (Prentice-Hall, 2000); State and Local Politics (Prentice-Hall, 2000); Colorado Politics and Government (Nebraska, 1993); The State of the Presidency (Little Brown, 1980); and The Paradoxes of the American Presidency (Oxford University Press, 1998).

"Dr. Cronin is married to Dr. Tania Cronin, a biologist and composer, and father of Dr. Alexander D. Cronin, a physicist at M.I.T."


 * 1972-1974, Visiting Fellow, Center for Study of Democratic Institutions, Santa Barbara