Presidents have elected four colleagues – all who have served on Division III’s Presidents and Chancellors Advisory Group – to begin four-year terms on the division’s Presidents Council this year.

The new members, whose terms will begin at the Council’s April meeting, are:

•         Kendall L. Baker of Ohio Northern. Baker, president at the school since 1999, previously served as president at North Dakota. A specialist in comparative politics, he has chaired the political science department at Wyoming and served in administrative posts at Bowling Green and Northern Illinois.

•         James E. Bultman of Hope. A Hope graduate, Bultman became president at the school in 1999 after serving for 14 years in the presidency at Northwestern (Iowa). During a stint as an education faculty member at Hope beginning in the 1970s, he coached the school’s baseball team and was an assistant football coach.

•         James W. Schmotter of Western Connecticut State. Schmotter assumed his current post in 2004 after serving as dean of the Haworth College of Business at Western Michigan for seven years. He also has been business and economics dean at Lehigh and earlier was on the faculty of Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management.

•         Ronald R. Thomas of Puget Sound. Thomas became president at Puget Sound in 2003 after serving as a faculty member at Chicago, Harvard and Trinity (Connecticut). He also served as vice president and acting president at Trinity. He recently has been working on his fourth book, which explores the relationship between the Victorian novel and the invention of the cinema.

Presidents Council members are elected in balloting open to all presidents and chancellors at Division III member institutions.

The four new members previously have served as conference representatives on the Presidents and Chancellors Advisory Group, which was established as part of Division III’s recent efforts to broaden presidential participation in the division’s governance.

The 15-member Presidents Council is Division III’s primary governance body, overseeing the Division III Management Council and the division’s committee structure.

The new Council members replace four presidents whose terms end at the 2009 Convention: Council Chair John Fry of Franklin & Marshall, and members Richard Flynn of Springfield, James Moseley of Franklin and Richard Torgerson of Luther.

The Council will be chaired beginning in April by Paul S. Trible, president at Christopher Newport. James Harris of Widener will serve as vice chair.