The NCAA Executive Committee has elected University of Hartford President Walter Harrison to succeed Kent State University President Carol Cartwright as chair.

Harrison will assume duties as Executive Committee chair after the committee's April 2005 meeting.

A member of the Division I Board of Directors, Harrison also chairs the Division I-AA/I-AAA Presidential Advisory Group and the Committee on Academic Performance, which is charged with monitoring the newly adopted academic-reform structure.

Harrison became Hartford's fifth president in July 1998. His appointment brought him back to the city where his career began three decades earlier as an undergraduate at Hartford's Trinity College.

He received a degree in English there, then a master's in English from the University of Michigan and a doctorate in English from the University of California, Davis.

Before taking the helm at Hartford, Harrison served as vice-president for university relations and secretary of the university at Michigan, where he also was a professor of English. Before that, he was president of Gehrung Associates, a national media relations consulting firm for colleges and universities. He also has served as director of college relations at Colorado College.

Harrison has held faculty positions at Michigan, Colorado College, Iowa State University, and Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. He also was a captain in the U.S. Air Force from 1969 to 1972.