President of Ursinus College

Brock Blomberg, Ursinus College’s 17th President

https://www.ursinus.edu/offices/presidents-office/

President Brock Blomberg is guiding Ursinus at a time when the college is embarking on one of the most ambitious periods in its storied history.

Background

The 17th President of Ursinus College, Brock Blomberg is a force of positivity and a passionate advocate for the liberal arts. A macroeconomist with expertise in the economics of terrorism, Blomberg’s work forges connections between economics, politics, and philosophy.

Since becoming president of the college in July 2015, Blomberg has embarked on a brisk course of strategic change. He has worked to spark innovation and entrepreneurship at the college through a number of projects scheduled for completion in 2018, including the Innovation and Discovery Center (IDC), which will infuse policy, entrepreneurship, and science with a postdisciplinary approach to education. He has championed the college’s three interdisciplinary Centers: U-Imagine, the Parlee Center for Science and the Common Good, and the recently formed Melrose Center for Global Civic Engagement. He created the Philadelphia Experience, which allows Ursinus students to take a full semester of coursework with Ursinus faculty members while living and completing internships in Philadelphia. Dedicated to improving quality of life on campus, he has championed the building of the Student Commons, to break ground in Winter 2018. He continues to build an inclusive campus climate, appointing a Presidential Adviser for Inclusion and Equity, strengthening the college’s commitment to recruiting and retaining students from underrepresented groups, and launching the college’s Institute for Inclusion and Equity.

Under Blomberg, the college has also embarked on an ambitious strategic plan, Ursinus 150. Generated by the community through a series of town halls and small-group discussions, the three pillars of the plan—Learning, Living Together, and Building Lifelong Connections—affirm the ethos of the college. This comprehensive plan provides concrete approaches to strengthening the college’s commitment to lifelong learning, diversity and inclusion, supporting people and infrastructure, and fiscal sustainability. As a physical complement to the strategic plan, the campus master planning process will direct approaches to the sustainability, utility, and design of the campus for coming decades. The college’s comprehensive campaign, Keep the Promise, which has already made substantial progress toward our $100-million goal, will ensure the fiscal health of the campus for the next generation of the Ursinus community.

Before arriving at Ursinus, Blomberg was dean of the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif., where he also served as the Peter K. Barker Professor of Economics and the George R. Roberts Fellow. An internationally known scholar and author of more than 40 articles and book chapters, Blomberg is a political economist with deep roots in national and global economic policy. He was on the faculty at Wellesley College and served as a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs before arriving at Claremont McKenna in 2003.

Blomberg was a senior economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, and was the U.S. Representative to the Economic Committee for Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation. He also served with such organizations as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Blomberg served in the military for eight years. He is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Tampa and received his master’s degree and doctorate in Economics from Johns Hopkins University.

President’s Commentary

President Blomberg shares his thoughts about the entrepreneurial spirit of the liberal arts.