Eugene M. Tobin

Program Officer

Eugene M. Tobin is the Program Officer for Higher Education and the Liberal Arts Colleges Program at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  His grantmaking responsibilities encompass the areas of faculty and curricular development, presidential leadership, undergraduate teaching and learning, educational effectiveness, and institutional collaboration. 

Mr. Tobin spent 23 years at Hamilton College as a faculty member, department chair, dean of faculty, and as the eighteenth president (1993-2003).  Prior to joining the Hamilton faculty in 1980, he taught at state colleges in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, was a National Endowment for the Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow at Vanderbilt University, and held visiting appointments at Miami University (Ohio) and Indiana University, Bloomington.  His research focuses on late nineteenth and early twentieth century American social and political history and the history of American higher education.

Mr. Tobin earned his BA in history from Rutgers University and his MA and PhD degrees in the history of American civilization from Brandeis University.  He is the co-author with William G. Bowen and Martin A. Kurzweil of Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education, winner of the 2006 American Educational Research Association's Outstanding Book Award.  His recent publications include an essay, "The Modern Evolution of America's Flagship Universities," in William G. Bowen, Matthew M. Chingos, and Michael S. McPherson, Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Public Universities (Princeton University Press, 2009).