UNH Presidents

Past President's of the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts and the University of New Hampshire. Read about the Presidents.


1866-1877 Asa D. Smith	1893-1903 Charles S. Murkland	1903-1912 William D. Gibbs	1912-1916 Edward T. Fairchild	1917-1927 Ralph D. Hetzel

1927-1936 Edward M. Lewis	1937-1944 Fred Engelhardt	1944-1947 Harold W. Stoke	1948-1950 Arthur S. Adams	1950-1954 Robert F. Chandler

1955-1961 Eldon L. Johnson	1963-1971 John W. McConnell	1971-1974 Thomas N. Bonner	1974-1979 Eugene S. Mills	1980-1983 Evelyn E. Handler

1984-1990 Gordon A. Haaland	1990-1994 Dale F. Nitzschke	1996-2002 Joan R. Leitzel	2002-2006 Ann W. Hart

Two 18th Presidents?

When Joan Leitzel was inaugurated, the program read that she was to become the 18th president of the University. As Ann Weaver Hart was inaugurated, the program again described her as the 18th president. The mystery traces its roots to 1866, when the college was founded in Hanover, N.H. To save money, the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts was situated next to Dartmouth College so the two schools could share facilities and faculty. Between 1866 and 1892, three men served as president of the college’s board of trustees. By the time Everett Sackett’s history of the University was published in the mid-’70s, two of the early presidents had been dropped, leaving only Asa Smith, who had also been President of Dartmouth. This new count continued until President Leitzel, overseeing a redesign of the University seal, discovered the error. Because Smith had been president of the Board, not the institution, Leitzel ordered the mistake rectified. Thus, the University’s 18th president, Joan Leitzel, was quite correctly succeeded by its 18th president, Ann Weaver Hart.

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UNH Presidents

Two 18th Presidents?