Walter A. Groves

Walter Alexander Groves (March 10, 1898 – September 22, 1983) was an American missionary, minister, educator, and academic administrator who was the 16th president of Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. He was born in Philadelphia and graduated from Central High School before enrolling at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. He spent three years there before leaving to enlist in the army during World War I. After the war's conclusion, he returned to Lafayette and graduated in July 1919. He spent the following three years studying at Princeton Theological Seminary but came one class shy of meeting the requirements for his degree. He returned to Lafayette to teach in 1922 and was ordained as a minister the following year; in 1925, he left the United States for missionary work in Tehran and spent the majority of the next fifteen years there.

Groves and his family left Iran in July 1940, shortly before the Anglo-Soviet invasion of the country. While on the ship home, he received a telegram from Centre College president Robert L. McLeod offering him a job as professor of philosophy and religion. Groves accepted and taught his first class at Centre in October 1940, the morning after arriving on campus for the first time. After teaching at Centre for two years, Groves became professor of theology at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and spent four and a half years there before returning to Centre as its president in January 1947. During his ten-year term in charge of the school, Groves managed personnel issues with the faculty and students; he started a campaign to encourage professors to pursue doctoral degrees.

Groves strengthened Centre's ties to the Presbyterian Church; he held the church's pro-desegregation views and wished for those views to be adopted by the college. Disagreements with the board of trustees on this issue ultimately led to his resignation effective August 1957. He returned to Iran shortly after and spent time in administration at the Abadan Institute of Technology and Pahlavi University before returning to the United States to retire. He went back to Iran a final time in 1966 to preach; while there, he helped to found Damavand College. He died in Albany, Georgia, in 1983.

Early life and education Groves was born on March 10, 1898, Both of his parents were immigrants from the British Isles: his mother, Ellen, was born in England and immigrated in 1885, and his father, Robert, was born in County Down, Ireland, and immigrated in 1883. Groves was the oldest of six children in his family; he had five younger sisters, two of whom died in infancy. He graduated from Central High School in 1915.

Very shortly after Groves was married to Estelle Crawford, on March 10, 1925, and Lafayette awarded him an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree in 1946. Two years after taking office, he was invited to a reception for Reza Shah in Washington, D.C., but was unable to attend. he also increased faculty salaries by 60% over the course of his term. The increased student enrollment prompted changes such as the creation of a student congress and a dean of students, and tuition and fees increased to $500 in 1951. In 1957, Centre adjusted its admissions policies when it began using the Scholastic Aptitude Test, now the SAT, when considering applicants. In a 1983 interview, he said that construction of the Memorial Gymnasium was the major fundraising effort of his presidency; he also mentioned the Weisiger Building, a fine arts building which was constructed on the campus of the Kentucky College for Women—at the time, Centre's women's campus—and funded through a willed donation of $150,000 (equivalent to $ million in ) by the benefactor Emma Weisiger. He was also able to help the school's financials by securing grants from the F. W. Olin Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Early in his presidency, he had a goal of consolidating the women's campus onto the main men's campus; upon raising the matter with the board of trustees, he received such a negative reaction that he did not raise it again for the duration of his term. A lack of desire for consolidation on the part of the women's college students further ensured such plans would not be acted upon,

A special meeting of the Centre board of trustees was called on April 13, 1957, for the purpose of receiving Groves's letter of resignation, which was officially dated and submitted on April 15. The board unanimously accepted the resignation and requested that he stay on until after commencement; he agreed, and his resignation was set to be effective August 31, 1957. W. B. Guerrant , a Centre alumnus and the former president of Austin College, was elected acting president on June 1 of that year. Spragens attended the next board meeting, on July 19, and on that occasion was offered the presidency, which he later accepted.

After leaving Centre, Groves began a stint as president of the Abadan Institute of Technology (now the Petroleum University of Technology) in Abadan, Iran, and he went to Shiraz in 1961 to become provost and vice chancellor of Pahlavi University (now Shiraz University). He retired to Albany, Georgia, in 1964 They had four children, three of whom were born in Iran and one in the United States. on September 22, 1983, at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany.