Ronald R. Thomas

Ronald R. Thomas (January 29, 1949[1] – April 17, 2023) was an American academic administrator who served as the 13th president of the University of Puget Sound. He held faculty and administrative appointments at University of Chicago, Harvard University, Trinity College, and the University of Puget Sound.

Ronald Thomas
13th President of the University of Puget Sound
In office
July 16, 2003 – June 30, 2016
Succeeded byIsiaah Crawford
Personal details
Born(1949-01-29)January 29, 1949
Orange, New Jersey, U.S.
DiedApril 17, 2023(2023-04-17) (aged 74)
Vashon Island, Washington, U.S.
Spouse
Mary Domingo Thomas
​
(m. 1991)​
EducationWheaton College (BA)
Brandeis University (MA, PhD)

Early life and education

Thomas was born in Orange, New Jersey, to Doris R. and Robert L. Thomas. His mother was an elementary school teacher and his father worked in accounting and administration at Monmouth University.[2] Thomas grew up in the Ocean Grove section of Neptune Township, New Jersey and graduated from Neptune High School in 1967. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature (magna cum laude) from Wheaton College (1971) and a Master of Arts (1978) and PhD (1983) in English and American literature from Brandeis University.[3]

Career

After graduating from college, Thomas moved to Boston to join Clear Light Productions as a film and media producer. In 1982, he was appointed assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago where he remained until 1990. Thomas then returned to the East Coast to serve as professor and chair in the English Department at Trinity College.

Thomas was named Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellow in the Humanities at Harvard University in 1991 and 1992, taking a leave from Trinity to begin research on his second book project, Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science. Thomas was appointed college vice president and chief of staff at Trinity in 1998, overseeing the implementation of Trinity’s campus master plan and its nationally recognized engagement with the community.[4] He was chosen as Trinity’s interim president in 2001 and 2002.

University of Puget Sound

Thomas served as the thirteenth president of the University of Puget Sound from July 16, 2003, to June 30, 2016. Major projects during his tenure included a 20-year campus master plan; a strategic plan of action that positioned the university as a national leader in liberal arts education with a focus on civic engagement and innovation; and an ambitious comprehensive capital campaign.[5][6]

Thomas also led new enrollment partnerships with the Tacoma Public Schools[7][8] and the Posse Foundation to expand the university’s commitment to diversity, equity, and access.[9]

Under Thomas’s leadership, Puget Sound was included in the guide Colleges That Change Lives, which singles out Puget Sound for the transformational effects that its dedicated faculty, innovative curriculum, and engaging community have on the lives of students and the accomplishments of graduates.[10]

Students at the University of Puget Sound called him "RonThom."[11][12]

In 2017, following his presidency, Thomas helped form Reinstitute, a group that works with campus leaders “to deepen the understanding of the fundamental challenges and transformations facing higher education and to implement mission-based action plans in response to them.”[13] Thomas also served on the governing boards of the College of Idaho[14] and Vashon Center for the Arts in Washington State.[15]

Scholarship

Much of Thomas’s scholarly work focuses on the role of the novel, and the interplay between fiction and reality, during the period stretching roughly from the Victorian Age through Modernity. For instance, Thomas “helped to pioneer a tradition of reading nineteenth-century literary realism... alongside and through photographic innovation,”[16] and he “used the analogy of the body to examine the image of the detective’s city [in literature] as a closed system.”[17]

Personal life and death

Ron Thomas married Mary Domingo Thomas on June 15, 1991, at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy. The couple met at Trinity, where Mary served as dean of students and lecturer in Classics.[18]

Thomas died on April 17, 2023, at the age of 74.[19]

Published books
  • Dreams of Authority: Freud and the Fictions of the Unconscious (Cornell University Press, 1990),[20] which shows how the representation of dream accounts in Victorian novels shaped Freud’s understanding of the human psyche. It was called "an intelligent and subtle book".[21]
  • Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science (Cambridge University Press, 1999),[22] “the first book-length work to examine critically how the history of forensic detection intersects with the development of the detective genre in the early part of the twentieth-century.”[23][24]
  • Nineteenth Century Geographies: The Transformation of Space from the Victorian Age to the American Century (Rutgers University Press, 2002),[25] a collection of essays co-edited with Helena Michie, examines how the period’s art and literature—in Britain and America—fundamentally altered the way we experience and conceive of time and space.

Thomas published two chapters of a forthcoming book titled Moving Pictures and Telling Stories: Specters of the Novel on Film.[26][27] The project investigates the shifting conceptions of persons in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fiction in relation to the invention of cinema.

Honors

Thomas was twice awarded honorary doctorates: a doctor of humane letters, honoris causa, from Trinity College in 2002,[28] and another from the University of Portland in 2016,[29] both for outstanding contributions to scholarship and teaching and for national leadership in higher education and public service.

In 2016 the University of Puget Sound Board of Trustees conferred the name “Thomas Hall” on the campus’s newest building, honoring Ron and Mary Thomas for their “exceptional leadership and for the landmark transformations made at the college during their 13 years of service.”[30]

Additional awards
  • Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellowship in the Humanities Harvard University (1991-92)
  • Margaret Church Modern Fiction Studies Prize, for year’s best published essay (1986)[31]
  • National Endowment of the Arts Summer Research Fellowship (1995)
  • Dean Arthur A. Hughes Award for Distinguished Teaching Achievement (Trinity College, 1997)[32]
  • Gold Award for Outstanding Writing of President’s Columns (Council for Advancement and Support of Education, 2008)
  • President’s Award for outstanding commitment to student life from Region V of NASPA, the national organization of student affairs professionals (2015)[33]

References
  1. https://id.oclc.org/worldcat/entity/E39PCjBkG69rQKjdrjRkBVQkTb.html
  2. "Obituary of Robert L. Thomas". Legacy.com. Archived from the original on April 18, 2023. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  3. C.R. Roberts (March 13, 2016). "Retiring UPS President Ron Thomas offers a few parting thoughts". The News Tribune. Archived from the original on May 5, 2021. Retrieved February 22, 2021.
  4. "Trinity Official Takes New Job". Hartford Courant. February 8, 2003. Archived from the original on April 18, 2023. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  5. Leah Todd (May 18, 2015). "University of Puget Sound president to end his tenure next year". Seattle Times. Archived from the original on February 1, 2020. Retrieved February 22, 2021.
  6. "Ronald R. Thomas, President Emeritus". Archived from the original on January 16, 2021. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  7. Katherine Long (September 29, 2014). "Tacoma university offers more financial help to local students". Seattle Times. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  8. Debbie Cafazzo (September 21, 2014). "UPS announces financial aid package for Tacoma Public Schools graduates". Tacoma News Tribune. Retrieved February 22, 2021.
  9. "Universities of Michigan & Puget Sound Join Posse". Spring 2015. Archived from the original on May 6, 2019. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  10. "Colleges That Change Lives: University of Puget Sound". Archived from the original on May 5, 2021. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  11. Lauren Foster (June 3, 2016). "Meet University of Puget Sound's New President". South Sound Magazine. Archived from the original on March 2, 2021. Retrieved February 22, 2021.
  12. Gaelyn Moore (March 5, 2013). "Overlooking The Sound reviews: featured guest Ronald Thomas". The Trail. Archived from the original on September 30, 2022. Retrieved February 22, 2021.
  13. "Reinstitute About Us". Archived from the original on January 22, 2021. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  14. "College of Idado Leadership". Archived from the original on January 17, 2021. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  15. "Vashon Center for the Arts Staff". Archived from the original on February 25, 2021. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  16. Cook, Susan (2011). "Season of Light and Darkness: 'A Tale of Two Cities' and the Daguerrean Imagination". Dickens Studies Annual. 42: 237–260. doi:10.7756/dsa.042.011.237-260. JSTOR 44371470. Retrieved February 22, 2021.
  17. Meyer, Joshua (2016). "'Fables' of the Material World in James Ellroy's Los Angeles". Western American Literature. 51 (3): 353. doi:10.1353/wal.2016.0044. JSTOR 44668477. S2CID 164854444. Archived from the original on April 18, 2023. Retrieved February 23, 2021.
  18. "A few questions for Mary Thomas" (PDF). Arches. University of Puget Sound. Winter 2007. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  19. "University of Puget Sound Mourns the Passing of President Emeritus Ronald R. Thomas". Archived from the original on April 18, 2023. Retrieved April 18, 2023.
  20. Thomas, Ronald (1990). Dreams of Authority: Freud and the Fictions of the Unconscious. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780801496943. Archived from the original on April 18, 2023. Retrieved March 22, 2023.
  21. Hirsch, Gordon (1993). "Reviewed Work". Modern Philology. 90 (3): 445–448. doi:10.1086/392096. JSTOR 438660. Archived from the original on April 18, 2023. Retrieved February 22, 2021.
  22. Thomas, Ronald (January 2004). Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521527620. Archived from the original on April 18, 2023. Retrieved February 23, 2021.
  23. Palmer, Joy (2001). "Tracing Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Forensic Detective Fiction". South Central Review. 18 (3/4): 54–71. doi:10.2307/3190353. JSTOR 3190353. Archived from the original on March 26, 2020. Retrieved February 23, 2021.
  24. O’Connor, E. (Winter 2001). "Reviewed Work". Albion. 33 (4): 683–684. doi:10.1017/S0095139000068241.
  25. Thomas, Ronald; Michie, Helena (October 23, 2002). Nineteenth Century Geographies: The Transformation of Space from the Victorian Age to the American Century. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 9780813531441. Archived from the original on October 19, 2021. Retrieved February 23, 2021.
  26. Thomas, Ronald (2009). Susan Bernstein and Elsie B. Michie (ed.). "Poison Books and Moving Pictures: Vulgarity in The Picture of Dorian Gray". Victorian Vulgarity: Taste in Verbal and Visual Culture. Ashgate Press: 185–200.
  27. Thomas, Ronald (2000). John Kucich and Dianne F. Sadoff (ed.). "Specters of the Novel: Dracula and the Cinematic Afterlife of the Victorian Novel". Victorian Afterlife: Postmodern Culture Rewrites the Nineteenth Century. University of Minnesota Press: 288–310.
  28. "Governors Rowland and Swift to Speak at Commencement and Class Day Events". May 1, 2002. Archived from the original on April 18, 2023. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  29. "University of Portland commencement speakers, honorees". Catholic Sentinel. April 2, 2016. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  30. "UPS to name Residence Hall for President Ron Thomas and Mary Thomas". The Suburban Times. May 20, 2016. Archived from the original on May 21, 2016. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  31. "List of the Margaret Church Memorial Prize winners by year". Archived from the original on June 7, 2021. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  32. "Faculty Prizes". Archived from the original on September 17, 2021. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  33. "NASPA Past Recipients". Archived from the original on April 18, 2023. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
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