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Blake Ragsdale Van Leer (August 16, 1893 – January 23, 1956) was the fifth president of Georgia Institute of Technology from 1944 until his death.

Early life and education

Van Leer was born in Mangum, Oklahoma. After his father's death in 1897 he lived in a Masonic Orphanage in Galveston, Texas. He graduated with honours from Purdue University in 1915 with a degree in Electrical Engineering. In 1924 he married Ella Lillian Wall in Berkeley, California.

His daughter Maryly V. Peck also became an engineer and college president.

Dean and officer

From 1932 to 1937 he was a Dean at the University of Florida. In 1937 he became the Dean of the School of Engineering at NC State University. While there he initiated as an honorary of the NCSU chapter of Theta Tau Professional Engineering Fraternity. Around 1940, with the permission of Dean Harrelson, Van Leer gave half his time towards the North Carolina Office for Defense orders. He resigned his post as Dean in 1942 to take a military leave. During the war he served as a U.S. Army officer (attaining the rank of Colonel), after which he returned to lead the school.

Georgia Tech

After World War II he returned to become the President of Georgia Tech. During his tenure the school admitted women for the first time and began steps toward integration. He stood up to Georgia governor Marvin Griffin's demand to bar Bobby Grier from participating in the 1956 Sugar Bowl game between Georgia Tech and Grier's University of Pittsburgh. He was also instrumental in making the school and Atlanta the first major research center in the American South. The building that houses Tech's school of Electrical and Computer Engineering bears his name.

Blake Ragsdale Van Leer had died of a heart attack on January 24, 1956 at the Atlanta Veterans Hospital.

See also

• History of Georgia Tech#Postwar changes and unrest

References

1. "Mother's an Engineer". Life. 1962. pp. 102–106.
2. "History of the ECE Department: 1930-1939". UFL. Archived from the original on 2010-06-03. Retrieved 2009-06-11.
3. "Guide to the North Carolina State University College of Engineering Annual Reports". NCSU. Retrieved 2009-06-11.
4. "Women: 30 Years at Tech". Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine. Vol. 58, no. 1. Georgia Tech Alumni Association. 1982. pp. 9–13.
5. McMath, p.282
6. "Campus Map: Van Leer Building". Retrieved 2007-05-20.
7. "Blake Van Leer, Educator, Dead; Georgia Tech President Was 62--Barred Cancellation of Bowl Game Over Negro Hailed by Faculty Basketball Game Off". The New York Times. January 24, 1956.

Works cited

• Robert C. McMath; Ronald H. Bayor; James E. Brittain; Lawrence Foster; August W. Giebelhaus; Germaine M. Reed (1985). Engineering the New South: Georgia Tech 1885–1985. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 0-8203-0784-X.

External links

• Van Leer family genealogy
• GIT profile from library
• Georgia Tech celebrates 50 years of women
• Official Army Register - 1956

• 1893 births
• 1956 deaths
• 20th-century American engineers
• People from Eastland County, Texas
• People from Atlanta
• Purdue University alumni
• Presidents of the Georgia Institute of Technology
• North Carolina State University faculty
• People from Mangum, Oklahoma