CoburnLast

During his six-year tenure, he helped guide the Boulder university's long-term strategic plan, increased financial aid by 60 percent, and opened up his home to welcome new students and provide faculty members a place to gather.

Stuart Lord, a Christian minister, will succeed Coburn, taking over the president's post Wednesday.

Lord, who earned his master's degree from Princeton Theological Seminary, has been associate provost of Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H., since 2000.

"I have greatly enjoyed working with my successor, Dr. Stuart Lord, during the transition period, and I share the trustees' conviction that he is the ideal candidate to move us to the next level of institutional excellence,” Coburn said in a news release.

Naropa faculty members and students say Coburn, who is retiring, was committed to creating an eco-friendly campus and expanding access to education for all students.

About 44 percent of Naropa's students are Pell Grant-eligible, which is double the national average.

Coburn also secured funding from the Frederick P. Lenz Foundation for the school's annual "Contemplative Pedagogy Seminar,” which will begin next month and attract visiting national and international faculty members to the campus.

"One of Thomas Coburn's biggest contributions to Naropa University has been the founding of an annual Contemplative Pedagogy Seminar which has brought university professors from the U.S., Mexico, Canada and the United Kingdom to Naropa to gain clarity about the definition, methods and outcomes of contemplative education, and to become more effective at providing this approach to all students in higher education,” said Richard Brown, chairman of the Contemplative Education Department.

Jenna Iacutone, a religious studies major who just finished her first year of graduate school at Naropa, said Coburn has been an advocate for students.

He helped set up a "graduate assistant scholarship” that she earned to help her afford to go on a month-long trip to the Shambhala Mountain Center, a Buddhist resort, as part of the curriculum for her religious studies program.

Iacutone also said Coburn was responsive to students' proposal to build a greenhouse on the school's Arapahoe campus, which started as a class project.

Lord will become the school's first black president. He served as executive director of the 1997 President's Summit for America's Future, working under General Colin Powell during the Clinton administration.

He also supervised the fundraising of $30 million for the Tucker Foundation, which educates Dartmouth's students to think and act as ethical leaders and responsible citizens through "service, character development and spiritual exploration.”

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