Butler U pres named to head Ursinus

Bobby Fong, the president of Butler University in Indiana, will become the 13th president of Ursinus College in Collegeville at the end of the current academic year.

Trustees this afternoon named Fong, an internationally reknowned scholar on writer Oscar Wilde, the permanent successor of the late John R. Strassburger. Strassburger, stepped down for health reasons June 30 after leading the private, liberal arts college for 16 years. He died in September.

Fong, who is Harvard-educated, is the son of Chinese immigrants and is one of only a handful of Asian American college presidents in the United States.

He has been Butler's president since 2001.

John E.F. Corson, a business and civic leader from Plymouth Meeting and a vice chairman of the Ursinus board, has been serving as the college's interim president since Strassburger's departure.

Ursinus, which enrolls 1,700, requires students to participate in independent learning and emphasizes undergraduate research.