Robert T. McCowan

Robert Taylor McCowan (July 28, 1928 – November 12, 2003) was an American businessman, president of Ashland Petroleum (1974), executive vice chairman of Ashland, Inc.(1980), board of trustees member of the University of Kentucky from 1981 to 1988, and subsequent chairman of the board from 1984 to 1989.

McCowan was born in Carlisle, Kentucky, on July 28, 1928. He was the son of William Ray McCowan, Sr. and Susan Margaret Taylor, both Kentucky natives. He spent most of his early life in Lexington, Kentucky, where he attended Maxwell Elementary and Morton Junior High schools and graduated from Henry Clay High School in 1946.

McCowan attended the University of Kentucky between 1946 and 1951, and earned his Bachelor of Business Administration from the UK College of Commerce, now the Gatton College of Business and Economics. As a UK student, he was president of the Student Union Board and was awarded membership in Omicron Delta Kappa – a leadership honorary, Beta Gamma Sigma – a commerce scholastic honorary, and Lamp and Cross – honorary given to seniors displaying outstanding leadership. As an alumnus, he was elected to a seat at the Directors Table of Beta Gamma Sigma.

McCowan joined Ashland, Inc. in 1951 as a sales representative. In 1954, he went to Chicago as a division sales manager to create a wholesale market for Ashland's petroleum products in the Midwest. In 1959, he returned to Ashland, Kentucky, as a special representative for refinery sales at the company headquarters and was later named assistant manager of the department.

After graduating from the University of Kentucky, he completed the University of Illinois Executive Development Program in 1964. He worked for Ashland, Inc. from 1951 to 1988 – rising through the ranks to become the company's vice chairman in 1980.

In 1965, he was selected to serve as executive assistant to Rex Blazer, Ashland's chairman of the board. Within a couple of years, McCowan was named vice president and promoted to administrative vice president in 1968. Ashland Petroleum Company was formed as a division of the parent company in 1970, in which McCowan served as director in 1971 and president from 1974 to 1979. In 1971, he was additionally elected to the board of directors at Ashland, Inc.

As UK's board chairman, McCowan led the university's effort to hire David Roselle as president following Otis A. Singletary’s retirement. He also chaired the board through the NCAA’s investigation and probation of the UK basketball program in the late 1980s.

In January 1981, Governor John Young Brown Jr. appointed him to the board of trustees of the University of Kentucky until 1989, and in June 1984 he was elected chairman of the board of trustees. He served as chairman from 1984 through 1988, having been re-appointed to the board by Governor Martha Layne Collins. The University of Kentucky awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1978 and also bestowed its Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1980.

"He was a driving force in the growth of the former Ashland Petroleum Company, particularly in the marketing arena," said Ashland chairman and chief executive officer James J. O'Brien. "He was instrumental in shaping and advocating Ashland's views on public policy, including energy policy education." During that year, he was later elected executive vice chairman of the board at Ashland, Inc. and continued to serve in that capacity until his retirement in 1988.

McCowan never forgot his connections to the University of Kentucky, and as an Ashland, Inc. executive, urged the company to support the university by bestowing the university's first $1 million corporate gift. In 1993, McCowan and his late wife, Nyle, personally donated financially to the UK Sanders–Brown Center on Aging.