Phillip Raymond Shriver was born in Cleveland, Ohio on August 16, 1922. Shriver received his B.A. from Yale in 1943, M.A from Harvard in 1946, and Ph.D. from Columbia in 1954. He married Martha Damaris Nye on April 15, 1944. From 1947 to 1965, Shriver was a member of the history faculty at Kent State University, serving as Dean of the College of Arts and Science from 1963 to 1965. In 1965, Shriver was named President of Miami University and served until 1981. During his tenure, Miami continued the campus expansion begun under John Millett. In 1970, Shriver's leadership was vital in bringing the University safely through a period of student unrest caused by the Vietnam War and the shootings at Kent State University. In 1974, Shriver oversaw Miami's merger with neighboring Western College. After leaving the presidency, he remained at Miami as a professor of history, teaching courses in American, Ohio, and Miami University history from 1981 to his retirement in 1998, He died in Oxford on April 23, 2011.
From the guide to the Phillip Raymond Shriver Collection, 1922-2011, 1965-1981, (Miami University)
