Gros Louis, Kenneth R. R., 1936-

Kenneth R.R. Gros Louis was a long-time university administrator.

On September 15, 1980, Gros Louis was named Vice President of the Bloomington campus. July 1, 1988, he was promoted to Vice President of the entire Indiana University multi-campus system and was given the additional title of Bloomington Chancellor. Effective August 11, 1994, IU President Myles Brand expanded Gros Louis' role in the university's administration and changed his V.P. title to Vice President for Academic Affairs. As Bloomington Vice President and Chancellor, one of Gros Louis' primary responsibilities was to field complaints and comments from students, faculty, and staff at IU. After his title change in 1994, he was then also responsible for faculty promotion and tenure decisions, academic planning and program reviews, major curriculum revisions, accreditation, and improved interaction with the university's deans. Gros Louis retired June 30, 2001.

Kenneth R. R. (Richard Russell) Gros Louis was born on December 18, 1936 in Nashua, New Hampshire, to Albert W. and Jeanette Evelyn (Richards) Gros Louis. In 1955, he completed his preparatory studies at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH before enrolling in Columbia College where he majored in both English and Mathematics. In 1959, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia College, graduating magna cum laude as well as having been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Concentrating on Renaissance Literature, he earned a Master of Arts degree, with honors, from Columbia College in 1960. He later attended the University of Wisconsin where he was awarded the Knapp Fellowship, and in 1964, earned a Ph.D. with a major in Medieval and Renaissance Literature and a minor in Medieval History.

Gros Louis began his academic career as a teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin from 1960-63. In 1964 he relocated to Bloomington, Indiana, and began a new position as both Assistant Professor of English and Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University. In 1966 he married Dolores K. Winandy with which he had two daughters: Amy Catharine, born March 20, 1967; and Julie Jeannette, born October 22, 1969. In 1967 he was promoted to dual Associate Professor of English and of Comparative Literature, for which he would win the Ulysses G. Weatherly Award for Distinguished Teaching. Aside from his teaching duties he was active in the administrative functions of the Comparative Literature Program serving as Assistant Chairperson from 1966-68, Acting Chairperson from 1968-69, and Associate Chairperson from 1969-70. Beginning in 1970 he served as Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences until 1973 when he was promoted to dual full Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature and also selected as Chairperson of the Department of English, where he served at until 1978 at which time he was named Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. On September 15, 1980, he was named Vice President of the Bloomington campus before being promoted to Vice President of all of the Indiana University multi-campus system as well as adding the title of Chancellor of Indiana University-Bloomington on July 1, 1988. Effective August 11, 1994, IU president Myles Brand, expanded Gros Louis’ role in the universities administration and changed his title to “Vice President for Academic Affairs”.

Gros Louis’ primary responsibilities of Vice President and Bloomington Chancellor were the fielding of complaints and comments from students, faculty, and staff at IU. He was also responsible for aiding in the development of the universities academic agenda. In order to strengthen IU’s academic agenda, he often advocated that a stronger undergraduate curriculum will attract and keep good professors at IU. It was issues such as racism, sexism, quality of education, faculty concerns, and student living that were the motivating factors behind many of his administrative decisions. In 1994, with a change in job title to Vice President for Academic Affairs, he was then responsible for faculty promotion and tenure decisions; academic planning and program reviews; major curriculum revisions; accreditation; and improved interaction with the universities deans. On top of these administrative responsibilities, he also made great strides in improving IU as an educational and social institution by creating the Herman B Wells Program for Outstanding Scholars; he championed the effort to open the Office of Gay, Lesbian, & Bisexual Student Support Services; influenced the founding of the Film, Jewish, & Afro-American studies departments; and was instrumental in the development of the School of Journalism, formerly a department, and the School of Informatics. In light of all these accomplishments, it comes as no surprise that he has been a forerunner in the consideration for presidential positions at the University of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Indiana.

In his academic career, Gros Louis was as much renowned for his research as he was his teaching. He is widely regarded as a medieval and renaissance scholar. He has written numerous articles for scholarly journals and delivered papers at meetings of the National Science Foundation and the Princeton University Colloquium on Graduate Education, among others. He has served as editorial advisor for Norton Publishing Co., editor for the Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, and manuscript curator for the University of Florida press as well as Indiana, Duke, Northwestern, Oxford, and Columbia universities. Along with IU Professor James Ackerman, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for “Humanities Institute: an Interdisciplinary Approach to the Bible as Literature” in 1979. In 1985-86 he was co-winner of the Fellner Award, for the article “Different Ways of Looking at the Birth of Jesus,” which was regarded as the best article published in Bible Review.

Throughout his academic career, Gros Louis received many awards for his research and teaching as well as having been elected to many prestigious academic positions. During the years 1979 to 1981, he held a National Endowment for the Humanities grant that supported the development of a curriculum to be taught in five prisons titled the “Prison Education Project”. In 1984 he served as a member of a 10-person National Endowment for the Humanities study committee that was charged with considering theory and practice of humanities programming as well as making recommendations for the next decade. He was elected chairman of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) on March 5, 1986, which is made up of Big 10 universities, including the University of Chicago, and is one of the oldest consortia of major universities in the United States; subsequently, he was re-elected to nine terms. On April 10, 1987 he was elected to a one-year term as chairman of the governing body of the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago, IL. He was inducted into the Indiana Academy, which acknowledges contributions of individuals to the cultural, literary, civic, religious, and educational development of the state, on June 10, 1991. Later that month he was appointed head of the University Academic Cabinet. On June 4, 1997 he was appointed to a 4-year term as commissioner for the Commission on Institution of Higher Education (CIHE) of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA). He was involved with the Council of Academic Affairs of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC). He was also a former chair of the Indiana Committee for the Humanities and member of the advisory panel of the Indiana Arts Commission.

Gros Louis’ Chancellorship may best be remembered by the ways in which he tried to expand the communication efforts of his office, which had been perceived as lacking throughout previous years by the public. In the early 1980’s he set up an “800” number for anyone in Indiana, whether they be a student, parent, or citizen, to call and speak with him concerning IU related issues every Thursday between the hours of 2:30 and 5:30pm. This service was discontinued after three years because, according to him, the same people kept calling every week. On Thursday September 2, 1993 he held the first “Meet Chancellor Gros Louis Day” as an attempt to increase his interaction with the student body. Those who attended his yearly speeches to the incoming freshman class will remember the way in which he used slides and humorous anecdotes to familiarize the universities new students with IU history and tradition. It was at these events that he tried to encourage students to participate in university organizations, clubs, or other groups in order to take advantage of the experiences and educational opportunities that IU had to offer.

Gros Louis’ exceptional career at IU was not without personal tragedy. His wife, Delores (Dee) K. Winandy Gros Louis, who had held faculty appointments in Women’s Studies, Speech & Theater, and the Honors Division at IU, died in a tragic accident at home on June 19, 1993 at the age of 56. Overcoming his personal grief, Gros Louis was remarried to Diana Mallory Hawes at Beck Chapel on Indiana Universities Bloomington campus on November 30, 1996.

Aside from his involvement in the university community, he has also been actively involved in many locally based social organizations and institutions. He has served as a member of many local Boards of Directors such as: the Monroe County United Way, from 1983 to 1986; the Monroe County Public Library; and The Associated Group (Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Indiana); etc.

After 21 years of serving in the administrative upper echelon of Indiana University-Bloomington, Kenneth R. R. Gros Louis retired on June 30, 2001. In 2004, he rejoined the university administration as Interim Senior Vice President and Bloomington Chancellor and in 2006 he was renamed University Chancellor. In April of 2011, the Board of Trustees bestowed upon him the designation of University Chancellor Emeritus.