William Kirwan

William English "Brit" Kirwan (born April 14, 1938) is an American university administrator and mathematician who is chancellor emeritus of the University System of Maryland (USM) and professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Maryland, College Park.

He graduated from Henry Clay High School in Lexington in 1956.

After high school, Kirwan enrolled at the University of Kentucky on a football scholarship.

He played one year on the freshman football team before leaving the sport to focus on his studies.

Previously, Kirwan worked at the University of Maryland, College Park from the 1960s to 1990s as a professor, administrator, and eventually president and was president of the Ohio State University from 1998 to 2002.

A native of Kentucky, Kirwan completed three degrees in mathematics, attending the University of Kentucky for his bachelor's degree and Rutgers University for his master's and doctorate degrees.

A member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity, Kirwan graduated from Kentucky in 1960 with an A.B. in mathematics.

Kirwan later completed two graduate degrees in mathematics at Rutgers University, an M.S. in 1962 and Ph.D. in 1964.

His doctoral thesis was Extremal Problems for Certain Classes of Analytic Functions, advised by Malcolm I.S. Robertson.

While completing his Ph.D., Kirwan was an assistant instructor in mathematics at Rutgers University.

From 1963 to 1992, Kirwan had 26 articles published in peer reviewed journals on topics such as real functions, bounded functions, and conformal maps.

Beginning in 1964, Kirwan was a mathematics professor at Maryland.

Kirwan started at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1964 as an assistant professor of mathematics.

In the 1966–67 school year, Kirwan was a visiting lecturer at Royal Holloway College, University of London.

At Maryland, Kirwan was promoted to associate professor in 1968 and full professor in 1972; Kirwan would remain on the mathematics faculty until 1998.

Kirwan co-edited the 1976 textbook Advances in Complex Analysis.

From 1977 to 1981, Kirwan was chair of the Department of Mathematics.

After over 15 years on the faculty, including four years as head of the mathematics department, Kirwan joined Maryland's administration, beginning as chief academic officer in 1981.

Kirwan served as the chief academic officer at Maryland from 1981 to 1988, with the title of vice chancellor for academic affairs from 1981 to 1986, provost from 1986 to 1988, and vice president for academic affairs in 1988; From August to November 1982, Kirwan served as acting chancellor between the administrations of Robert Gluckstern and John Brooks Slaughter.

As vice chancellor, Kirwan instituted stronger admissions standards, expanded undergraduate merit scholarships and graduate fellowships, and started a process for academic planning.

Kirwan had two stints as the interim president of the university in 1982 and 1988 before being formally elected by the board of regents as president in 1989, a position he would hold before leaving to become president of Ohio State University in 1998.

After serving as acting president since August 1, 1988, Kirwan became president of the University of Maryland, College Park, on February 1, 1989, by a unanimous vote from the board of regents.

As president, Kirwan restructured the university's academic organization from one of divisions to schools and colleges.

With budget cuts resulting from the early 1990s recession, Kirwan cut a college, seven departments, and 32 degrees from the university.

Additionally during the Kirwan administration, the university had an increase in research dollars and one of the highest numbers of graduating students who were black.

On January 4, 1998, after E. Gordon Gee resigned to become president of Brown University, the Ohio State University Board of Trustees voted 17–0 to name Kirwan the 12th president of the university.

Kirwan officially became president July 1 that year.

At Ohio State, Kirwan focused his attention on improving the academic standings during his tenure.

Most recently, Kirwan served as chancellor of USM from 2002 to 2015.

Kirwan returned to Maryland in 2002 to serve as chancellor of the USM before retiring in 2015.

He left Ohio State on June 30, 2002 to become chancellor of the University System of Maryland.

His legacy of striving for diversity at Ohio State, lead to the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity being named after him.

Returning to Maryland, Kirwan accepted an offer on March 25, 2002, to become chancellor of the University System of Maryland (USM).

Kirwan began as chancellor on August 1, 2002.

Kirwan also chaired the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics from 2007 to 2016.

During his presidency, the NCAA implemented a recommendation from the Knight Commission to create financial incentives for member schools to improve student-athlete academic performance.

The son of former University of Kentucky football coach and president Albert D. Kirwan, Kirwan was born in Louisville, Kentucky and raised in Lexington, Kentucky.

In 2009, he received the Carnegie Corporation Leadership Award, which included a $500,000 grant for academic programs.

The following year, Kirwan won the 2010 TIAA-CREF Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence.

On May 13, 2014, Kirwan announced publicly that he would step down as USM chancellor after twelve years of service.