Musician named UR president

Dr. Ronald Andrew Crutcher, president emeritus of Wheaton College in Massachusetts and a musician with a wide-ranging academic and performing career, has been elected by the University of Richmond Board of Trustees as the university’s next president.

He will succeed Edward L. Ayers on July 1.

Dr. Crutcher is an alumnus of Miami University of Ohio, the University of Bonn, the State Academy of Music in Frankfurt, Germany, and Yale University. At Yale, he was the first cellist to earn a doctorate of musical arts.

He was vice president of academic affairs and dean at the Cleveland Institute of Music (1990-94) and director of the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin (1994-99). He served as provost at Miami of Ohio (1999-2004), after which he spent 10 years as president of Wheaton.

He also has held leadership positions with the Association of American Colleges & Universities, the American Council on Education and other academic groups.

As a performing cellist, he played in the Cincinnati, New Haven and Greensboro symphony orchestras and the Beethovenhalle Orchestra of Bonn. He also has sung as a tenor soloist. He currently is the cellist of the Klemperer Trio.

Dr. Crutcher served on the boards of the Berklee College of Music, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Cincinnati Opera Association, the Austin Symphony Orchestra and the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble. He was president of Chamber Music America from 1996 to 2000.

In addition to serving as president of UR, Dr. Crutcher will be a professor of music.

His wife, Dr. Betty Neal Crutcher, is a cross-cultural mentoring consultant, helping to establish mentoring relationships among people of varied racial/ethnic, gender, socioeconomic, religious and sexual-orientation backgrounds.