Since becoming Elon University’s eighth president in January 1999, Leo M. Lambert has advanced an ambitious agenda to establish Elon as a top-ranked liberal arts university and a national leader in engaged teaching and learning.
Led by President Lambert, Elon has accomplished broad improvements in academic and student life programs while continuing to expand a beautiful residential campus, which has been designated a botanical garden.
Under Lambert’s leadership, the university established the Elon University School of Law in downtown Greensboro (2006) and created a new School of Health Sciences (2011). Earlier in his tenure, he supported a major academic reorganization that established the School of Communications, the School of Education and Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences, which joined Elon’s existing Martha and Spencer Love School of Business.
The academic climate of the campus has been strengthened through special initiatives to shelter a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa and earn top accreditations for Elon’s professional schools, including AACSB International for the Love School of Business, ACEJMC for the School of Communications and ABA for the School of Law.
In 2001 Elon College became Elon University, and Lambert led creation of the NewCentury@Elon strategic plan, advancing Elon’s position as a national model of engaged learning. Upon that plan’s completion, he led creation of the current strategic plan, the Elon Commitment, which will guide the university’s development through 2020. Among the priorities of that plan are initiatives to enhance inclusion, diversity and global engagement; support a world-class faculty and staff; attain the highest standards of academic achievement; expand graduate programs, career services and alumni programs; continue growth of Elon’s athletics programs; and continue development of the campus with special emphasis on transformation of the residential experience and growth of a vibrant Town of Elon.
Lambert also provided leadership for the successful completion of Ever Elon in December 2011, a $105 million campaign that set new records for fundraising at the university.
With a priority on expanding partnerships with K-12 public education, Lambert was instrumental in the creation of the Elon Academy in 2007, an enrichment program for academically talented high school students in the Alamance-Burlington (N.C.) School System who have financial need or have no family history of college attendance. The program has become a national model of excellence, enrolling nearly all of its graduates in higher education.
New academic facilities constructed during Lambert’s tenure include Carol Grotnes Belk Library, the six-building Academic Village and Ernest A. Koury Sr. Business Center. In developing its residential campus, Elon has constructed The Oaks residence hall complex, Colonnades Dining Hall and the five-building Colonnades Neighborhood, and several new residence halls and a commons building in Danieley Center.
In line with Lambert’s vision of further developing one of the nation’s premier university living-learning environments, Elon is building The Station at Mill Point, a townhouse-style living community for juniors and seniors; the 600-bed Global Residential Neighborhood on the shores of Lake Mary Nell; a new international-themed dining hall which will double the size of the Moseley Center; and the Numen Lumen Pavilion, Elon’s new multi-faith center in the Academic Village.
New athletics facilities have included Rhodes Stadium, Alumni Field House, Belk Track and White Field, Hunt Field for soccer, Worsley Golf Training Center and Hunt Softball Park, which is scheduled to open in 2013.
Under Lambert’s guidance, land was designated for the creation of the Elon University Forest, and the university created an environmental sustainability master plan to reduce energy consumption and set conservation standards for university construction and operations.
Lambert has assumed a number of leadership roles regionally and nationally, serving on the national and North Carolina boards of Campus Compact and as a founding board member and president’s council chair of Project Pericles, a national organization that encourages college students to become civically engaged in their communities. Elon has been named one of the nation’s top universities for community service for five consecutive years in the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll. In 2009, Lambert was named a director of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), which comprises more than 1,150 public and private colleges and universities of every type and size.
Lambert has provided leadership on athletics issues, serving as a member of the NCAA Presidential Task Force on the Future of Division I Athletics and chairing the NCAA Committee on Athletics Certification.
Lambert has written extensively about post-secondary education and is co-editor of a book about university teaching that was published by the Syracuse University Press in 2005. His alma mater, the State University of New York at Geneseo, awarded him an honorary doctorate of humane letters in 2002 in recognition of exceptional achievements in higher education, and the Geneseo Alumni Association awarded him its Excellence in Education Award. In 1998, he was named by Change magazine as one of the nation’s outstanding young leaders in higher education. In 2009, he received the inaugural William M. Burke Presidential Award for Excellence in Experiential Education from the National Society for Experiential Education. In 2010, he received the Periclean Service Award from Project Pericles.
As a prominent figure in North Carolina’s Triad region, Lambert has been named one of the “most influential leaders” for five consecutive years by the Triad Business Journal.In 2011 he was named the #1 large workplace leader in a survey by the Greensboro News & Record. He has also received the Thomas Z. Osborne Distinguished Citizen Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Greensboro, N.C., Chamber of Commerce, and was named a “Father of the Year” by the American Diabetes Association Greater Greensboro Area Father’s Day Council.
Lambert has a bachelor’s degree from State University of New York at Geneseo, a master’s degree from the University of Vermont, and a Ph.D. from Syracuse University. Prior to coming to Elon, he was provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse.
Lambert and his wife Laurie have two daughters, Callie Lambert Brown, M.D., and Mollie Lambert, a 2011 graduate of Elon’s master of arts program in interactive media, and a grandson, Caleb Ellis Brown.
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