Biography of Dr. Stuart C. Lord

Dr. Stuart C. Lord, a nationally recognized expert in service learning, multicultural and spiritual education, and leadership and ethics will become the fifth president of Naropa University on July 1, 2009.

Dr. Lord has helped foster the growth and advancement of many communities as both educator and humanitarian. He has served as an administrator and managed civic education, community service and religious and spiritual life programs at both Dartmouth College and DePauw University. In these positions, Dr. Lord developed programs that aid under-resourced domestic communities, including New Hampshire’s Upper Valley, the Mississippi Delta and the areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. He has also perennially led international service trips to developing nations around the world, including Bangladesh, Nicaragua, the Philippines and Sierra Leone. In addition, Dr. Lord served as executive director of the 1997 President’s Summit for America’s Future, working under General Colin Powell during the Clinton administration.

During his time at Dartmouth College, from July 2000 to present, Dr. Lord has served as associate provost (2000-present), interim vice president for institutional diversity (2006–07) and Virginia Rice Kelsey ‘61S Dean of the Tucker Foundation (2000–08). As associate provost, Dr. Lord has worked on initiatives for institutional planning within the Provost Division to enhance staff development, retention and recruitment in support of diversity. He was named co-chair of the Provost Diversity Council to foster greater collaboration. Dr. Lord has worked to establish stronger links between a number of programs on campus and the surrounding community, and has provided assistance to the provost on various planning projects. Dr. Lord also continues to oversee Project Bangladesh, a student-led initiative with the goal of building an orphanage in Charfassion, Bangladesh, which was established at the Tucker Foundation under his leadership.

While Dr. Lord was dean of the William Jewett Tucker Foundation, it emerged as one of the nation’s leading on-campus civic service and spiritual life centers with student body participation in the foundation’s programs growing from approximately 45 percent to more than 70 percent during his tenure. To foster and support this growth, Dr. Lord restructured the administrative backbone of the foundation, defined a new strategic direction, increased annual giving by more than 800 percent and oversaw a near tripling of the endowment. These successes allowed for the expansion of program offerings and stabilized the long-term outlook of the foundation. The Tucker Foundation now runs programs that combine resources from Dartmouth’s undergraduate and graduate schools to serve international communities and has significantly expanded the scope of its local and national service programs. Dr. Lord’s co-development of Summer Enrichment at Dartmouth Program (SEAD) with the chair of Dartmouth’s Department of Education has resulted in a program that brings students from under-resourced high schools in California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania and South Carolina to Dartmouth for intensive academics, service learning and college preparation over a period of two to three weeks in each of three consecutive summers. More than 80 percent of SEAD graduates are now attending college. Dr. Lord also initiated the Civic Internship Program, which provides students with a firsthand knowledge of the not-for-profit and philanthropy sectors of higher education.

Appointed as Dartmouth’s vice president for institutional diversity and equity on an interim basis for the 2007–08 academic year, Dr. Lord provided campus leadership on issues of equity, diversity and equality. In conjunction with school deans and department heads, he worked to establish diversity plans for each graduate school and department and for the provost’s division. In this position, Dr. Lord also advised the College’s president and Human Resources on diversity-related campus and personnel issues. In addition, Dr. Lord sponsored campus dialogues on issues of diversity and equity.

Prior to joining Dartmouth College, Dr. Lord worked at DePauw University where he served as university chaplain (1988–1995), associate dean of academic affairs and director of volunteer programs (1995–97), professor of ethics and leadership (1993–2000), director of the Bonner Scholar Program (1993–2000), founder and executive director of the Hartman Center for Civic Education and Leadership (1995–2000) and associate dean of DePauw University (1997–2000). Through Dr. Lord’s building of student service programs and the Hartman Center, annual student body participation in community service increased during his tenure from 25 percent to more than 93 percent—1,900 students. Dr. Lord also created the Hartman Institute to promote dialogue on social justice issues and the Leadership Academy, a four-year comprehensive leadership development program. He also began a summer internship program and held the annual Safe Place Summit. This program and summit brought local youth service providers together to collectively create benchmarks and strategies catering to the needs of the communities’ youth. At DePauw, as well as Dartmouth, the development and ongoing success of these programs were made possible by Dr. Lord’s attraction of significant new gifts. During his time at DePauw, Dr. Lord also served as the president and the vice president of the National Association for University College Chaplains

In 1996, the Points of Light Foundation and the Corporation for National Service appointed Dr. Lord to serve as executive director of the President’s Summit for America’s Future. The President’s Summit was a national volunteer initiative targeted at improving the quality of life of America’s youth. Dr. Lord managed the summit staff team of four hundred, was responsible for the general budgetary oversight and provided day-to-day managerial support for the chief executive officer. On April 27, 1997, five thousand volunteers attended the summit and, as executive director, Dr. Lord was featured on MSNBC and the Sunday Morning Show. The President’s Summit for America’s Future seeded the America’s Promise Organization, for which Dr. Lord served as the first chairperson of the University Advisory Board. As a result of the President’s Summit, DePauw University served as the backdrop for Oprah Winfrey’s launch of her national initiative called Oprah’s Angels.

Dr. Lord was raised in New Rochelle, New York. During his undergraduate years at Texas Christian University, Dr. Lord served as the vice president of both the student body and the programming council. In addition, he was active in the United Campus Ministry and Baptist Student Union, served as a residence hall assistant, became an All-America Track & Field athlete. In 2002, Dr. Lord was the recipient of Texas Christian University’s Distinguished Alumni Award. After graduating from Texas Christian University in 1982, Dr. Lord attended Princeton Theological Seminary where he earned the degrees of Master of Divinity (1986) and Master of Theology (1987). In 1993 Dr. Lord received the Doctor of Ministry degree with a specialization in multicultural education from United Theological Seminary.

Dr. Lord plans to reside in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife, Adderly, and daughter, Chloe.