Residence Hall Named for Former UK President Roselle
LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 24, 2012) — In ceremonies today, the University of Kentucky formally named a residence building on North Campus in honor of David P. Roselle, UK's ninth president.
Roselle was president at UK from July 1987 through December 1989 and went on to serve as president of the University of Delaware for 17 years.
Current UK President Eli Capilouto pointed to Roselle’s reputation as a “faculty-centered leader,” and added, “I am therefore quite confident that the Board of Trustees' decision last October to name a building after David is very popular on our campus.”
David P. Roselle Hall, formerly North Hall, is a 144-bed residence hall first opened in the fall of 2005. It houses UK’s Fine Arts Residential College for first-year students.
“I am delighted by the action taken and to be included among the former presidents who have been memorialized on the UK campus," Roselle said. “This honor confirms that my respect and good wishes for the University of Kentucky are reciprocal, and that is extremely important to me.”
At Kentucky he quickly became acquainted with the university's supporting constituency of alumni and friends, by traveling and speaking extensively throughout the state.
Noted for his belief that the then-new computation and communications technology was of paramount importance to academic institutions, Roselle was lauded for the way he helped design and implement a strategy for providing wider access to information technology on the UK campus.
Roselle was nominated for the accolade by retired senior vice president for finance and administration at UK, Jack Blanton, and the university’s retired director of public relations, Bernie Vonderheide. He was cited for his desire to achieve “national recognition for UK with respect to the quality of its graduates and its scholarship and research.”
Roselle was named one of “Delaware’s 50 Most Influential People” by Delaware Today magazine in its April 2012 issue. The publication called him the “architect of the modern UD” in his role as the University of Delaware’s 25th president, a position he held from 1990 to 2007.
Roselle became interim director of Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in July 2008, and has held the position of director since November 2008.