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Biography of UK's Third President Frank McVey Released Monday

By Alan Lytle

Lexington, KY – University of Kentucky officials are celebrating the release of a new biography chronicling the tenure of the school's third president, Frank McVey, who guided UK through World War I and the Great Depression. Biographer and Educator Eric Moyen, says a case can be made to call McVey UK's first modern president.

"The King Library, Alumni Gymnasium, Student Union, and about twenty other structures including Memorial Hall, he helped build. However, his most important foundation was creating a presidency that did not focus on what UK was, but on what it should become. And I think that every president since that time has followed in his footsteps and in that way."

Moyen says McVey faced challenges not unlike the kind Lee Todd confronts today.

"The president was the first to engage in a structured development campaign but he found citizens who wanted to build facilities for basketball and football before academics. Memorial Hall was dedicated a decade after World War I; ten years after, because the citizens wanted an Alumni Gymnasium and Stoll Field to be built first."

The McVey biography is the newest publication in University Press of Kentucky's Thomas D. Clark Studies in Education, Public Policy and Social Change Series.