Wesley Wentz Posvar (1925–2001) was the fifteenth

Chancellor Chancellor () is a title of various official positions in the governments of many countries. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the (lattice work screens) of a basilica (court hall), which separa ...

(1967–1991) of the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...

Biography

Posvar was born September 14, 1925, in

Topeka, Kansas Topeka ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Shawnee County. It is along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, in northeastern Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2020 cen ...

. He attended

West Point The United States Military Academy (USMA), commonly known as West Point, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York that educates cadets for service as Officer_(armed_forces)#United_States, comm ...

, was senior Air Cadet, and graduated first in his class in 1946, and after graduation he joined the

U.S. Army Air Corps The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the aerial warfare service component of the United States Army between 1926 and 1941. After World War I, as early aviation became an increasingly important part of modern warfare, a philosophical ri ...

, which later became the

U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its origins to 1 ...

. He was the first Air Force officer to receive a

Rhodes Scholarship The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford in Oxford, United Kingdom. The scholarship is open to people from all backgrounds around the world. Established in 1902, it is ...

, earning both a bachelor's and master's at

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

. At

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

he earned a master's in public administration and a Ph.D. in political science. Posvar achieved the Air Force rank of brigadier general. After his retirement from the United States Air Force, he became President of the University of Pittsburgh. On July 31, 1991, Wesley W. Posvar officially retired from his post as chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh after 24 years. Posvar was married to Mildred Miller, New York Metropolitan Opera star and recital mezzo-soprano, with whom he had three children, Wesley, Marina and Lisa. Posvar died of a heart attack on July 27, 2001. He was buried with full military honors at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Posvar was Chairman of the Department of Political Science at the Air Force Academy. He was one of the closest friends of the science fiction writer Robert A.Heinlein, who lived in Colorado Springs during the time that Posvar was a professor at the Academy.

University of Pittsburgh

His administration is best known for elimination of the university's debt from its 1960s financial crisis and for raising the school's prestige and endowment. Under Posvar, Pitt's operating budget grew sevenfold to $630 million and its endowment tripled to $257 million. He also established the

Honors College An honors program is an undergraduate program in an institute of higher education providing exceptional scholars with supplemental or alternative curricular and non-curricular programs, privileges, special access, scholarships, and distinguishe ...

, the School of Health-Related Professions, the University Center for International Studies, the Center for Philosophy of Science, and the University Center for Social and Urban Research. In 2000 Pitt's Forbes Quadrangle building, on the site of the former

Forbes Field Forbes Field was a baseball park in the Oakland (Pittsburgh), Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from 1909 to June 28, 1970. It was the third home of the Pittsburgh Pirates, the city's Major League Baseball (MLB) team, and the fir ...

, was renamed

Wesley W. Posvar Hall Wesley W. Posvar Hall (WWPH), formerly known as Forbes Quadrangle, is a landmark building on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. At it is the largest academic-use building on campus, providing a ...

in his honor. A room is also dedicated in Posvar’s honor at the Thayer Hotel at West Point.

References

*
Editorial: Pitt and Posvar / He presided over the university's revival

Posvar eulogized as 'agent for social change'

Biography

University of Pittsburgh

References

Further reading