M. Lee Pelton

Marvin Lee Pelton (born September 27, 1950) is an academic administrator and college president. A native of Kansas, US, he held deanships at Colgate University and Dartmouth College before becoming president of Willamette University's president in 1998. He served at the Salem, Oregon school until 2011, when he became the 12th president at Emerson College on July 1.

Marvin Lee Pelton was born on September 27, 1950, to Clarence and Rosa Lee Pelton. He has three sisters, LaDonna Dozier (neè Pelton) and two nieces, LeAndra and Brittany Dozier and sisters Teresa Pelton and Kim Pelton. He grew up in Wichita, Kansas, where he graduated from Wichita North High School. His father worked as a laborer and later as a manager for the police department for the city of Wichita while his mother acted as a homemaker. In 1974, Pelton graduated from Wichita State University. There he earned a degree in English and psychology, while graduating magna cum laude with a focus in 19th century British literature. He earned a doctorate in English and American literature from Harvard University in 1984.

From 1974 to 1983, while working on his doctorate at Harvard, Pelton served as an instructor and teaching fellow in the English Department. After receiving his PhD in 1983, he became Senior Tutor of Winthrop House, one of Harvard’s undergraduate colleges. He left Harvard in 1986, to become Dean of Students at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y. He served in that capacity until being named Dean of the College in 1988. Pelton left Colgate in 1991, when he was named dean of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. While at Dartmouth he was responsible for the largest administrative body of the school, and held an academic appointment in the Department of English.

In July 1998, Pelton was appointed as the 22nd president of Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, the first university in the western United States. He expanded the faculty with 26 new tenured-track professorships and increased minority enrollment to 24 percent, up from 11 percent when he started. The school built two new buildings, Ford Hall and Kaneko Commons, and purchased several others adjacent to the campus in downtown Salem, and raised $131 million in a fund-raising campaign. At the end of the 2010 academic year Pelton left to take the same position at Emerson College in Massachusetts, replaced at Willamette by Stephen E. Thorsett.