Carleton College to award David Porter an honorary degree

Carleton College will pay tribute to David Porter on June 11, awarding him an honorary degree at its 137 ^th commencement. 

Porter taught classics and music and was active in faculty governance for 25 years at Carleton, and servedas president for his last year there, 1986-87. That same year hewas named Skidmore's fifth president, a role in which he served from 1987 to 1999. Now into the third year of a five-year appointment as the Tisch Family Distinguished Professor at Skidmore, he teaches in the classics and English departments and continues to be active as a pianist.

During his tenure as Skidmore president, Porter articulated a vision of the College as having a distinct mission in interdisciplinary teaching, thereby laying the foundation for an interdisciplinary teaching museum focused as much on ideas and contexts as on objects. That vision ultimately led to the funding and construction of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum, now nationally regarded as a model for other college museums.

Skidmore's landscape changed in other substantial ways during Porter's tenure, including the renovation and expansion of Scribner Library, expansion of Dana Science Center, expansion of what is now the Williamson Sports and Recreation Center, and construction of the outdoor athletic complex that today includes Wachenheim Field.

In addition, Porter led what then was the largest fund-raising effort in Skidmore's history. The five-year "Journey" campaign, launched in 1993, raised $86.5 million, enabling the college to increase its endowment substantially and undertake major construction projects, including those mentioned above. Also during Porter's presidency, Skidmore created more than ten new faculty chairs, launched the Honors Forum, and inaugurated a program of scholarships in science and mathematics named in his honor.

"This was a heady time for Skidmore," recalls Phyllis Roth, dean of the faculty during most of Porter's tenure and now professor emerita. "David Porter is beloved by generations of alumni and faculty and staff colleagues in part for his legendary concerts and penchant for occasionally painful puns, but mostly for the stellar example he set of a truly caring and collaborative colleague and teacher. We congratulate Carleton College on recognizing David so appropriately."

Upon completing his Skidmore presidency, Porter served for nine years as the Harry C. Payne Visiting Professor of Liberal Arts at Williams College, commuting to Williamstown from Saratoga Springs, where he maintained his residence and his Skidmore connection by presenting occasional lectures and performances at the college. In the fall of 2008, he taught at Indiana University in Bloomington as the Case Distinguished Visiting Professor of Classics.

Porter is the author of books on Horace and Greek tragedy and of three monographs on Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury. He is also editor, with Gunther Schuller and Clara Steuermann, of a book on pianist and Schoenberg colleague Edward Steuermann, with whom Porter studied from 1955-1962. His book On the Divide: the Many Lives of Willa Cather was published in 2008 by the University of Nebraska Press, and a second book on Cather, co-authored with a colleague at Drew University, appeared in 2009. He and his wife, Helen, will soon publish In Her Own Words: The Date Books of Lucy Skidmore Scribner, Founder of Skidmore College.