The NCAA News - News and Features

April 21, 1997

Lubbers, Wadlow join II Commission

Two university chief executive officers have been appointed to vacancies on the Division II subcommittee of the NCAA Presidents Commission and the NCAA Division II Presidents Council Transition Team.

Arend D. Lubbers, president of Grand Valley State University, will represent Region 3 and Joan K. Wadlow, chancellor of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, will represent Region 4 on the subcommittee and Presidents Council.

Lubbers replaces Wendell G. Rayburn, formerly president of Lincoln University (Missouri), and Wadlow replaces Judith A. Ramaley, formerly president of Portland State University.

Lubbers returns to the Commission after previously serving terms from 1984 through 1986 and 1990 through 1993. He served as the Commission's Division II chair in 1992 and 1993.

He became Grand Valley State's second president in 1969. He also served for nine years as president at Central College (Iowa), after teaching history and political science at Wittenberg University from 1956 to 1958.

The football stadium at Grand Valley State is named in Lubbers' honor.

Lubbers holds degrees in history from Hope College and Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey (New Brunswick).

Wadlow became chancellor at Alaska Fairbanks in 1991. She previously was provost at the University of Oklahoma and also has held academic and administrative positions at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and the University of Wyoming.

She has served as president of the largest accrediting organization in the world, the North Central Association, and currently is a member of the Commission on Colleges of the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges.

Wadlow also serves on the National Merit Scholarship Corporation Board of Directors and chairs the International Affairs Commission of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges.

She earned a bachelor's degree and doctorate at Nebraska and a master's degree at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She also holds a certificate from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, where she was a Rotary scholar.