Trusteeship - March/April 2021 - ABG32

Growing Pains Lead to
Major Accomplishments
BY CHARLES S. CLARK

ichard T. Ingram- " Tom " to everyone who knows him-was a University of Maryland administrator and former high school teacher in 1968 when he was persuaded
to help AGB with a project. He already was known to then-Executive Director J.L.
Zwingle for the freelance work for which a professor had recommended him; under a grant
from the U.S. Office of Education, Ingram was to compile a first-of-its-kind roster of 30,000
college and university trustees.

That work-done on IBM punch cards
and carbon paper in an age long before
cheap long-distance phone service, fax, or
e-mail-had been planned in the Washington office AGB had occupied since 1964. It
housed two full-timers and two part-timers
crammed in a modest suite in a newly subdivided luxury apartment building formerly
occupied by Andrew Mellon, the art patron
and one-time U.S. Treasury secretary. (The
building now houses the National Trust for
Historic Preservation.) From modest beginnings in 1921, the association now had its
first staff, thanks to the vision of leaders at
the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Ingram was called to active duty in
the U.S. Army in 1969 and spent time in
Saigon as an operations research officer,
returning in 1971 to resume work at AGB.
Meanwhile, AGB had moved to the new
National Center for Higher Education at
One Dupont Circle.
AGB's agenda during Ingram's early
years was clear from annual meeting
themes in the years immediately preceding: " The Changing Student Mood, "
" Crisis on the Campus: Import for
Governance, " " Boundaries of Academic
Freedom, " and " The Trustee Role in Stabilizing the Campus. " In the late 1960s,

trustees who had long been invisible to
most students and the public were under
attack as guardians of the status quo, and
AGB was grappling with its transition
from a quiet, informal network of volunteers to a dynamic, steadily funded,
fully staffed professional association that
worked for board members, rather than
merely being of them.
Nationally, much was happening in
higher education. The Supreme Court
affirmed that students had free-speech
rights. Traditional curricula, such as

32 AGB: A CENTENNIAL HISTORY | March 2021

those that required study of Latin, were
being replaced by courses of study considered more " relevant. " To accommodate
the sprawling baby-boom generation
now of college age, some public universities were enrolling as many as 50,000
students. The 1972 amendments to the
Higher Education Act would require
states to create governing, coordinating,
or planning boards, which complicated
relations between state governments
and institutions. The same legislation
established Pell Grants to give federal
money not to institutions but directly to
low- income students to use at the college of their choice. And Title IX of the
new law required all higher education
institutions that receive federal dollars to
demonstrate that they do not discriminate against women. Zwingle's retirement
in 1973 led the AGB board to select as
president Robert L. Gale, former vice
president of Carleton College and higher
education development consultant.
One of Gale's first tasks was to dissuade
Ingram from accepting a job to study
the Maryland higher education system.
Ingram soon became AGB's executive
vice president and a crucial link between
the Zwingle and Gale eras.
Like many presidential transitions, the
baton-pass from Zwingle to Gale required
some cultural adjustments. Accustomed
to addressing the previous leader as " Dr.
Zwingle, " the staff was now to call the boss
" Bob. " Where national conferences were
staid affairs that drew 100-200 trustees,

Trusteeship - March/April 2021

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