Charles Albert Anderson, D.D., served 1931-1942
Before Charles Oliver Gray left, he found a new president to facilitate the transition from his administration to the next. Gray selected Charles Anderson as his successor. Anderson, a native of Orange, N.J., graduated from Williams College in 1912 and Auburn Theological Seminary in 1916. He became minister of Watertown, N.Y. and Maplewood, N.J. He worked at The University of Pennsylvania as a Student Pastor in 1921. While at The University of Pennsylvania, he earned a Masters in Psychology. Anderson took over the presidency during the beginning of the Great Depression. His genuine interest in students and their preparedness for a challenging work place prompted his monitoring of students’ abilities, progress and career objectives. He increased the academic standards, hired more professors with terminal degrees, initiated new accounting practices and improved the library. Anderson’s innovation and forward thinking lead to an increase in administrative and non-teaching staff. Anderson wanted to build new academic buildings and dorms, significantly grow the endowment and increase pay rates, but he never found the funding for such projects in the midst of the Great Depression and the beginning of WWII. He resigned on January 15, 1942 to assume the presidency of Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.