Nation's Youngest College Head at 33
Little more than a decade away from his undergraduate years, Dr. Louis T. Benezet '36 became the nation's youngest president of a class A college on August 1 when he assumed his top-post duties at Allegheny College, Meadville, Pennsylvania. Although that decade was packed tight with graduate study, teaching and educational administration, after his election the former Dartmouth Phi Beta Kappa declared, "I plan to be a student at Allegheny until I feel I know it as thoroughly as a man should." He is one of the two Dartmouth sons of Louis P. Benezet '99 who retired as Dartmouth Professor of Education last June.
Benezet, who will be officially inaugurated at Allegheny on October 15, stepped over from the post of Assistant to Chancellor William P. Tolley at Syracuse University which he held along with an assistant professorship of education since August, 1947. He also served as executive secretary of the university's recent self-survey, and he was instrumental in reorganizing the Syracuse adult education program in 1946. In the Navy, the story was much the same. As an Educational Services officer, Benezet organized off-duty education centers at Great Lakes, in Australia, New Guinea, the Philippines, and the San Francisco Bay area from 1943 to 1946.
His teaching career began at Hill School, Pottstown, where he was an English instructor for two years, and continued with an associateship in psychology at Reed College, Portland, Oregon for the next two years. At Reed, he acquired an M.A. and a charming wife, Mildred Twohy of Portland. He held a fellowship at Columbia from 1940 to 194 a and was also a fellow in psychology at the College of the City of New York, 1941-42. Equipped with a Ph.D. from Columbia University Teachers College, in 1943, the former Dartmouth half-miler went to Gales burg, Illinois, for a year as associate professor of psychology and assistant director of admissions at Knox College.
Father and author, as well as educator, Dr. Benezet has two children, Joel, 3 1/2, and Laura, 10 months. His book, General Education in the Progressive College, was published in 1943.
