Burton C. Hallowell, educator, economist, and President Emeritus of Tufts University died November 21, 2006, at the age of 91.
Born in Orleans, Mass., in 1915, he grew up in Danielson, Conn., graduating from Killingly High School in 1932 and Wesleyan University (BA ’36, MA ’38). Caught up in WW II, he received his PH.D. in 1949 in economics from Princeton University. He also has five honorary degrees.
In World War II, he served as a civilian economist in the Office of Strategic Services and in 1942 entered the Army as a private, advancing to captain in the Transportation Corps. before his discharge in 1946. He led a group which designed and prepared statistical measures of performance for each of the Army’s corps in getting requisitioned supplies overseas to our troops. These measures were actively used to improve performance.
In 1946 he rejoined the Wesleyan University faculty (having been an instructor there in 1941-42) advancing to full professor and head of the Economics Department. Starting in 1949 he also served as consultant to the president of the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company for eleven years. He always believed that a foot in the real world made a better college professor. His scholarship was in the international economics and financial fields.
In 1961 he was persuaded to become a vice president, later executive vice president of Wesleyan. He played a significant role in resolving, with the faculty, the issue of selective doctoral programs. He also started to build a permanent money-raising capability for Wesleyan.
A strong believer in the practical usefulness of a liberal education at all levels of a person’s career, he left Wesleyan in June of 1967 to become president of Tufts University. He saw at Tufts a strong arts and sciences core including undergraduate women and well-known professional schools of medicine, dental medicine, and international relations. This appealed to him. The setting for higher education in 1967 was tumultuous and difficult: the Viet Nam War and Universal Military Service, minority and women’s rights, protests, sit-ins, and riots often leading to violence. There was uncertainty day and night as to what would happen next.
In this setting he lived on campus and related directly to students at all times. He turned budget deficits into surpluses, brought a sense of unity and cohesiveness to a university of proud and diverse schools and colleges, brought a view of what a higher education could and should be, and helped realize that vision. He also revamped and eliminated many restrictions on women, brought in more minorities, and rebuilt a sagging relationship with the Tufts New England Medical Center, its major medical affiliate. He brought a strengthened Tufts safely through the most difficult period in its long history.
He became president of the state Association of Schools and Colleges (AICUM) and brought it from a loose association into a powerful and effective voice of higher education.
When, in 1976, the tumult had eased and educational progress and finances were much improved, he resigned to direct his attention to corporate governance in the United States, a long-time interest. Briefly, from 1976-1979, he was chairman of Keystone Custodian Funds, a mutual fund firm in Boston. He was or became a director of seven corporations and participated in panels regarding reform for corporate governance. He relinquished the last directorship, Oppenheimer and Co., Inc., in New York City in 1997.
His directorship of Shaw’s Supermarkets led him back to higher education as one of the five original trustees of the Davis Educational Foundation. This foundation provides grants for projects designed to improve teaching of undergraduates. He and his wife, Joyce, drove thousands of miles throughout New England to colleges making proposals. He believed that teaching had been losing out compared to conventional research since World War II, and it should be invigorated. The foundation also supports projects such as college consortia to control university and college costs. He continued this work for the rest of his life.
He believed in helping the states and localities where he worked and lived. The governor of Connecticut appointed him chair of the commission to allocate federal facility grants among Connecticut colleges and universities. In 1967 the governor of Massachusetts appointed him as the first chairman of the new Housing and Home Finance Agency, which has thrived over the decades in making medium and low income housing a reality.
On moving to Cape Cod, he served as a Finance Committee member for a term in Orleans as well as on a revision committee for the town charter. He was one of the five founders of the Friends of the Cape Cod National Seashore and a trustee of the Cape Cod Museum of National History.
Dr. Hallowell’s first wife, Pauline, died in 1998, and in 2002 he married Joyce, who survives him. He is also survived by his son, Robert; two stepchildren, Deborah Fortin and John Glynn; and three step grandchildren, Emily, Peter, and Daniel Fortin.
