Welcome to my homepage.  

This site gives an overview of my background as an educator and the engagements that I have been privileged to have at three excellent universities over the past 35 years.  You will find a site where I post articles written for seven newspapers in Southern Illinois, a career summary in the form of a curriculum vitae, a biography, strategic initiatives from 6 years as Chancellor of Southern Illinois University and some television and radio pieces that help define my ideas and views of the power of higher education, and its impact on society.

Thank You for taking the time to visit.

Walter Wendler on Excellence

Excerpts from Opportunity through Excellence, 2005,
Snavely and Associates for Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Governments cannot make universities by enactments of laws: Nor corporations by erections of edifices:  The church cannot create them under the authority of heaven:  The flattering eulogies of orators cannot adorn them with learning:  Newspapers cannot puff them into being.  Learned men-scholars- these are the only workmen who can build up universities.  Provide charters and endowments- the necessary protection and capital - provide books and apparatus- the necessary tools: Then seek out sufficient scholars, and leave them to their work, as the intellectual engineers who alone are competent to do it.

--Henry P. Tappan (1805-1881) President, University of Michigan 1858, lecture, Christian Library Association 22 June, quoted in Richard Hofstadter and William Smith (eds.) American Higher Education: A Documentary History Volume II 1961, p. 519