R. Stanton Hales was The College of Wooster’s 10th president, serving from 1995-2007. Prior to his appointment as president, he served as vice president for academic affairs at Wooster from 1990 to 1995. He is also a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science.

A native of Pasadena, Calif., Hales was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Pomona College in 1964. He then earned master’s and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from Harvard University, where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow during the 1964-65 academic year and served as a teaching fellow from 1965 through 1967.

Hales joined the faculty of his alma mater, Pomona, in 1967. He was named associate dean of the college at Pomona in 1973 and served for one year (1982-83) as acting dean. In 1971, he received the Rudolph J. Wig Distinguished Professorship Award at Pomona.

Active in a number of professional organizations, Hales has recently been treasurer and board member of the Association of American Colleges & Universities. Previously, Hales served as president of the North Coast Athletic Conference and as board chair of the Five Colleges of Ohio, the Great Lakes Colleges Association, the Association of Independent Colleges & Universities of Ohio, the Association of Presbyterian Colleges & Universities, and the Annapolis Group, an organization of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges.

Outside of academics, Hales is a six-time national champion badminton player. He won back-to-back junior titles in 1959 and 1960, consecutive open championships in 1970 and 1971, and two straight senior crowns in 2002 and 2003. He was a member of the Council of the International Badminton Federation for 10 years and was one of three deputy referees for the badminton competition at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta.

In the area of public service, Hales served on Governor Robert Taft’s Commission on Higher Education and the Economy in 2003-04. In 2002-03, he chaired a Site Selection Task Force for the Wayne County Chapter of the American Red Cross.

Hales and his wife, Diane, have two children: Karen, a Ph.D. graduate of Stanford and currently on the faculty at Davidson College, and Chris, a graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law School and currently an attorney in San Francisco.