Walter Barackman Roettger

Dr. Walter B. Roettger was elected as Lyon College's sixteenth president in April 1998 by the Board of Trustees, which also appointed him professor of politics. He came to Lyon from Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, where he served as vice president of the college and dean of the faculty. He has also held senior administrative appointments at Bryant College in Smithfield, Rhode Island, and at the University of Hartford. His collegiate teaching experience spans more than a quarter of a century; while director of the Institute of Public Affairs and Administration and associate professor at Drake University, he earned tenure.

Dr. Roettger earned his A.B. in political science from Stanford University. Following service in the U.S. Air Force as an astrogeophysicist, he enrolled at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he received his Ph.D. in political science. For more than a decade, he served on the Truman Scholarship Foundation, chairing its Chicago and Boston regional review panels. A gubernatorial appointee to the Iowa Merit Employment Division, he served as this body's vice chair in 1981. He has authored numerous articles and publications focusing on electoral behavior.

Dr. Roettger was born in Champaign, Illinois, where his father, a former major league baseball player with the St. Louis Cardinals, was the head baseball coach at the University of Illinois. His hobbies include reading, travel, and jogging; he has completed more than a dozen marathons, including two finishes at Boston. His wife, Margaret Begley Roettger, is a former coordinator of community relations for the New England Patriots of the National Football League, and served as interim director of the Winston Churchill Memorial and Library at Westminster College. The Roettgers have one son, Daniel.