Kenyon College president named next leader of American Museum of Natural History
After nearly a decade leading Kenyon College, President Sean M. Decatur has announced his departure to take over the American Museum of Natural History.
Decatur, 54, will leave the college at the end of this calendar year, and his first day at the New York City museum will be April 3.
“It has been a tremendous honor for me to lead this remarkable community over the past 9.5 years — to learn, to teach and to grow alongside you — and to aspire together to what I know is a very bright future for Kenyon,” Decatur said in a message to the Kenyon community earlier this month.
Kenyon College Board of Trustees Chair Brackett Denniston III said the college would form a presidential search committee of faculty, staff, student and alumni representatives, as well as trustees, with the goal of selecting a new leader by the end of the academic year.
In the meantime, Kenyon Provost Jeff Bowman, who previously served as acting president during Decatur’s sabbatical in the fall, will continue in that role until a new president is selected. Decatur, who was appointed president in 2013, will be available to help with that transition until March.
“Sean Decatur’s presidency has been marked by intelligence, humility and enormous integrity,” Denniston wrote. “The Board of Trustees is deeply grateful to Sean for all that he has done for Kenyon and seeks to select an outstanding successor.”
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Decatur will take over for Ellen V. Futter, who is stepping down in March after 30 years of leadership.
Scott L. Bok, chairman of the museum’s board, told The New York Times that Decatur — who will be the institution's first Black leader, succeeding Futter, the first female president — is a kind of progress “overdue among large institutions like ours.”
Decatur received a total pay of $554,421 as of 2019, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Although Decatur does not have any experience leading cultural institutions, he told The Dispatch that there are more similarities to higher education than it might first seem. For one, Kenyon is comparable in terms of budget and staff to the American Museum of Natural History.
But beyond that, Decatur said, the museum awards him the opportunity to continue his personal mission — making scientific education and research available to all. His own academic journey has embodied that mission, he said.
Born in Cleveland, Decatur's mother, Doris, was a middle school math and science teacher. He was the kind of kid who signed up for every after-school and summer program at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, programmed his TRS-80 computer to keep track of his Dungeons & Dragons characters and was a proud member of many student groups, including the meteorology club.
“You could name a potential nerdy club, and I was in it," Decatur told the Kenyon Alumni Magazine in 2013.
Decatur earned his bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and received his doctorate in biophysical chemistry from Stanford University in California. Much of his career has been spent at small liberal arts colleges, like Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and Oberlin College in northern Ohio, and included a stint at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a visiting scientist.
"As an African American, I'm from a group historically underrepresented in some areas of the sciences," he said. "There have been many times in academic settings where I am the only, or one of the only, people who looks like me in my discipline."
Decatur said institutions, whether in the cultural or higher education industry, best serve their communities when they reflect those communities and people of all backgrounds feel seen.
"I want to send a clear signal that the museum really does belong to everyone," he said.
Decatur said his tenure at Kenyon also reflects that theme of access and opportunity for all.
Kenyon, a small liberal arts college in Gambier in Knox County, launched the Kenyon Access Initiative with a goal of raising $50 million in seed funds to expand the number of scholarships available to low-income students. Decatur said the college is on track to surpass that goal, which was set just a year ago.
During Decatur’s time as president, a number of Kenyon students and recent graduates received highly selective honors, including 13 Goldwater Scholarships, 13 Gilman Scholarships, 30 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships and 80 Fulbright Awards.
"Kenyon did well before I arrived, and it will continue to do so into the future," he said.
Sheridan Hendrix is a higher education reporter for The Columbus Dispatch. Sign up for her Mobile Newsroom newsletter here and Extra Credit, her education newsletter, here.
shendrix@dispatch.com
@sheridan120
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Kenyon's Sean Decatur to lead American Museum of Natural History
