2014 Meeting Information 
21 
In 1972, having demonstrated his ability as a faculty member and in several 
administrative positions, Joab M. Lesesne Jr. replaced Hardin as Wofford’s 
president, serving until he retired at the end of the 1999-2000 academic year. 
Some statistical comparisons may be instructive. In 1972, Wofford’s 
endowment market value was $3.8 million; in 1999, it was approximately $90 
million, thanks in part of a $13 million bequest from the estate of Mrs. Charles 
Daniel. The downtown campus doubled in size, and new structures included 
the Raines Center with its Tony White Theater and Benjamin Johnson Arena; 
the $6 million Franklin W. Olin Building, the Papadopoulos Buildings; the 
Roger Milliken Science Center; and three new fully networked residence 
halls. The college received national recognition as a “higher education best 
buy” and came to be listed in nearly all of the selective colleges guides. 
Since the early 1960s, Wofford had been struggling to find an athletic identity 
— the college’s investment exceeded the norm for “good time sports,” but it 
was insufficient to consistently attract the best student-athletes or improve 
national visibility. Aging facilities were painfully inadequate for a program that 
aspired to meet the recreational, intramural and intercollegiate requirements 
of a larger, more diverse student body. Wofford carefully moved step-by-step 
from NAIA to membership in the Southern Conference, NCAA Division I. 
Meanwhile, the construction of the Richardson Physical Activities Building, 
Gibbs Stadium, and the Reeves Tennis Center allowed Spartanburg and 
Wofford to become the summer training camp home of the NFL’s Carolina 
Panthers, founded and owned by Jerry Richardson ’59. 
When he became Wofford’s 10th president in 2000, Dr. Benjamin Dunlap 
challenged the faculty to “make connections,” combining its core curriculum 
with advanced and highly innovative opportunities for research, internships, 
and study abroad. Open Doors studies conducted by the Institute of 
International Education for Students consistently ranked Wofford in the top 
five of all colleges and universities in the nation in the percentage of students 
who studied and traveled abroad. Faculty earned national recognition in the 
development of multi-disciplinary learning communities. “The Novel 
Experience” for first-year students was ingeniously designed to emphasize 
the importance of making connections—across disciplines and between town 
and gown—beginning in the first week of a student’s Wofford career. The 
Community of Scholars not only provided opportunities for sophisticated 
research, but also offered a summer-long residential community bridging 
both disciplines and differences of age and status. Similarly, Wofford’s 
groundbreaking Success Initiative, working in multi-disciplinary, student-led 
teams, made connections between theory and problem solving. As an 
outward and visible equivalent of such intellectual adventures, the Wofford 
Village created an apartment-style housing option to renew personal 
relationships among seniors while further connecting them with lifestyles they 
planned to take up as they graduated and moved out into the world. 
