Clayton S Rose

Clayton S. Rose, Ph.D., is the fifteenth president of Bowdoin College. He assumed the position on July 1, 2015, having been elected by a unanimous vote of the Bowdoin College Board of Trustees in January 2015, following an eight-month international search. Rose, 56, previously served as a member of the faculty at the Harvard Business School, where he taught and wrote on the responsibilities of leadership, managerial values and ethics, and the role of business in society. He joined the faculty at HBS in 2007 and was named professor of management practice in 2009. His courses at HBS included, among others, an elective course exploring business engagement with society’s larger problems (Reimagining Capitalism), a required course on ethics (Leadership and Corporate Responsibility) and an elective titled The Moral Leader. He was also engaged administratively at HBS, dealing with issues of community values and standards and the school’s honor code, and was part of a faculty group advising on improving the experience of women faculty and students. He was recognized at HBS for innovation in teaching and for service to the community. Originally from San Rafael, California, Rose earned his undergraduate degree (1980) and M.B.A. (1981) at the University of Chicago. In 2003, following a highly successful 20-year leadership and management career in finance, he enrolled in the doctoral program in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania to study issues of race in America, earning his master’s degree in 2005 and his Ph.D. with distinction in 2007. Rose is a member of the board of trustees of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the nation’s largest private supporter of academic biomedical research, having joined in 2009. He previously served on the board of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. He is also a member of the board of directors of XL Group. His wife of 32 years, Julianne H. Rose, originally from Rosemont, Penn., earned her undergraduate degree in biology magna cum laude at Boston College and her M.B.A. at the University of Chicago. She began her career in finance, held elected office at the municipal level for many years, and now owns a small business in Wells, Maine. They have two sons: Garett, a graduate of The University of Chicago and the University of Chicago Law School; and Jordan, a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Business School. Garett and his wife Meredith, who is also a lawyer, reside in Washington, D.C., and Jordan lives in New York City. Julianne and Clayton live on campus with their two labs, Pete and Emmie. He will be inaugurated officially as Bowdoin’s fifteenth president on October 17, 2015.