Past Presidents of Winthrop University

To establish funding for the school, Johnson went to Robert C. Winthrop, Massachusetts philanthropist and chair of the Peabody Fund. Winthrop shared Johnson's vision and secured the $1500 needed to open Winthrop Training School in 1886.

Johnson's successor was the dean of the college, James Pinckney Kinard. As he prepared for his new position, Kinard reflected on Johnson's legacy, calling him "a builder with an almost uncanny power of succeeding where other men would have lost faith and failed. He possessed the ability to give himself entirely to an idea and the power to work for it constantly."

Kinard had the difficult task of guiding Winthrop through the Depression. Despite the economic crisis, the Kinard administration saw the expansion of Carnegie Library (now Rutledge Building), planning for the amphitheater, membership in the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, and completion of Kinard Building, the main academic facility on campus.

In 1934 Winthrop gained a new chief administrator. Shelton J. Phelps became the third president and worked to strengthen Winthrop's curriculum and faculty, as well as take advantage of Works Project Administration funds. It was during Phelps' administration that the school served as host to its most famous visitor of that time, Eleanor Roosevelt, who spoke to Winthrop students on April 27, 1940.

In 1944 Phelps turned over the administrative reins to noted South Carolina legislator, Henry R. Sims, who served as Winthrop's fourth president until 1959. Among the accomplishments of the Sims administration were the abolition of the uniform requirement, establishment of freshman entrance exams and college board test, and a near ten-fold increase in the school's financial base.

Also during Phelps' tenure, coeducation was first examined as an alternative to the institution's all-female status. Debate continued throughout the mid-1950s, but stalled after the Board of Trustees was unable to garner necessary support in the legislature.

Sims' successor was Charles S. Davis, Winthrop's fifth president. Davis orchestrated the gradual closing of Winthrop Training School, the campus laboratory school which had been in operation more than 50 years, and made numerous strides in paving the way for integration and later coeducational efforts.

In 1964 Rock Hill native Cynthia Plair Roddey became the first black student on the Winthrop campus. She received her Master of Arts in Teaching degree in 1967. In 1972 a partial coeducation bill, allowing restricted admission of males, was passed.

As Charles B. Vail took over the Winthrop presidency in 1973, coeducation, or more specifically the push for unrestricted coeducation, was again the hot topic on the Board of Trustees' agenda. The next year SC Governor John C. West signed into law a bill allowing the institution to admit males on an unrestricted basis.

Other accomplishments of the Vail administration were placing new emphasis on outreach efforts, including continuing education, internships and cooperative education; encouraging faculty involvement in professional and community activities; expanding Winthrop's business program; organizing men's sports; and beginning construction of the Winthrop Coliseum.

In 1983 Philip Lader came aboard as president, bringing with him a wealth of experience in the private sector. His enthusiastic outreach efforts helped the school to realize record enrollment and unprecedented levels of state and private funding. Academic improvement, cultural events and an improved institutional image were other items on the Lader agenda.

In 1986 Martha Kime Piper made history by being named Winthrop's first woman president. Under her leadership, a new school, the School of Visual and Performing Arts, was established, bringing together the major arts disciplines in a manner unique in South Carolina. Piper laid the groundwork for campus beautification efforts, and numerous structural renovations which were realized following her death in 1988.