Thomas J. Hochstettler

Thomas John Hochstettler became Lewis & Clark College’s 23rd president on August 16, 2004.

An Ohio native, he has a broad background in higher education that spans financial and strategic planning, institutional and academic development, fund-raising, and scholarly research and teaching as a historian.

Hochstettler earned his bachelor of arts degree in history from Earlham College in 1969 and a year later his master’s degree in history at the University of Michigan. A Woodrow Wilson National Fellow from 1969 to 1970, he held a Horace H. Rackham Doctoral Fellowship from 1973 to 1974 and a teaching fellowship in history at the university from 1974 to 1977. Hochstettler was also a Stipendiat of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst in Würzburg, Germany, from 1975 to 1976. During that time, he attended the Goethe Institute in Lüneburg, Germany, and Würzburg’s Julius-Maximillian-Universtität. Upon returning to the States, Hochstettler earned his Ph.D. in history at the University of Michigan in 1980.

A teaching and research fellow in the department of history at Stanford University from 1978 to 1980, Hochstettler spent the next six years as a financial analyst, budget manager, and assistant director of finance at Stanford University Hospital. His accomplishments included achieving for Stanford the second highest reimbursement rate of all medical facilities nationwide. In 1986, Hochstettler became a senior associate and staff economist for Stanford’s Office of Financial Planning.

From 1987 to 1992, Hochstettler served Bowdoin College as dean for planning and general administration and lecturer in history. His teaching specialty was war and society in the modern world. In his capacity as dean, Hochstettler was chief planning officer and chief information officer. He developed and coordinated strategic plans for academic programs, student life, and new facilities, and was responsible for expanding the college’s computing network campuswide. Hochstettler was acting vice president for finance and treasurer for two years at Bowdoin. In this post he substantially eliminated the college’s existing structural budget deficit and refinanced and streamlined institutional debt for capital projects.

Hochstettler next lent his acumen for administration to the University of Houston System, where he was director of academic planning from 1992 to 1996. In addition to establishing the system’s comprehensive internal strategic plans to coordinate initiatives across the four universities, Hochstettler was a member of the task force that created the Texas State Planning White Paper for Higher Education. This document served as Texas’ higher education road map for the 1992 to 1996 legislative sessions.

In 1996, Hochstettler joined Rice University as associate provost and adjunct lecturer in history. There he managed the periodic operational peer-review process of the university’s eight schools and codrafted the university’s five-year strategic plan for its first-ever capital campaign. Hochstettler was selected to chair the Rice-Bremen planning committee for the establishment of International University Bremen, a private English-language, liberal arts, research university.

Hochstettler was founding chief academic officer of the university, which is the first private research university to be established in Germany. From 1999 to 2002, he served as its chief academic officer and visiting professor of history, and from 2002 to 2004, he was Bremen’s vice president for academic affairs. During his tenure at the university, Hochstettler was responsible for the development of its academic and student life programs, and was instrumental in building the university from a staff of two in 1999 to an institution with three schools, two interdisciplinary research centers, a student body of 600, 80 regular faculty members, and 50 academic support and student services staff.

Throughout his career, Hochstettler has made presentations on early modern German and European military history and German-U.S. educational cooperation and European postsecondary education. His scholarship extends to contemporary higher education topics including enrollment management, technology, and liberal learning. In 2004, the Chronicle of Higher Education published Hochstettler’s paper “Aspiring to Steeples of Excellence at German Universities,” which explores the difficulties in applying the liberal arts education model to the German higher education system.

Hochstettler and his wife, Marcia Glas-Hochstettler, have three sons: Will, Taylor, and Ben. Will is currently attending college at Rice University. Taylor is currently attending college at Lewis & Clark. The Hochstettlers and their son Ben live near the College in the Cooley House, the presidential residence.

NOTE: Hochstettler is pronounced HOE-stet-lur