Lawrence Schall

Lawrence M. "Larry" Schall is the president of the New England Commission of Higher Education and the former and sixteenth president of Oglethorpe University, a private liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia.

Early life and education Schall was born in Manhattan and grew up in Wilmington, Delaware. With respect to Oglethorpe, Jack Guynn, the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, has said that "Every indicator of success has moved in the right direction under [Schall's] leadership — enrollment, markers of academic strength such as SAT scores, philanthropic giving and on and on." Schall was inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa as a faculty/staff initiate in 2017 at Oglethorp.

Advocacy Schall is a signatory of the Amethyst Initiative, which calls for "informed and unimpeded debate" regarding the United States' legal drinking age of 21. In 2013, he joined with Elizabeth Kiss, the president of Agnes Scott College, to start a letter urging reform of gun safety laws. Schall has said he had the idea to start this letter, which more than 300 college presidents have signed, in "a fit of sleeplessness" after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Personal life Schall began working as an Uber driver in the summer of 2015. He and his wife, Betty Londergan, have four children.