Richard M. Krasno, president and executive director of the Chapel Hill-based William Kenan, Jr. Fund, was President Leo M. Lambert’s guest for Elon’s Student Undergraduate Research Forum, held Tuesday, April 25. Visiting campus for the first time since April 2004, Krasno met with the three Kenan Scholars and Mary Jo Festle, professor of history and director of the Elon Honors Program.
Generous gifts from the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust in 2002 and 2003 established an endowment in the fund’s name to support the scholarship of one honors fellow in each class year at Elon. The first recipient of the Kenan Scholarship was Tori Strange ’07 of Berwyn, Pa. The subsequent recipients have been Kaitlyn Day ’08 of East Grand Rapids, Mich., and Alyse Knorr ’09 of Forsyth, Ga. The William R. Kenan, Jr. Pavilion in the Academic Village is named in memory of the fund’s founder, William R. Kenan, Jr.
Krasno attended SURF presentations by Melissa Askins ’06 (faculty mentor Kerstin Sorenson) on “The Analysis of Feminist Ideology within the Political Party Process in Sweden” and by Kaitlyn Day (faculty mentor George Taylor) on “Abortion Opinions in 2000 and 2004 Presidential Elections.”
Krasno is president of the four affiliated William R. Kenan Funds. Previously, Krasno was president of the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif. From 1981 to 1998, he served as president and chief executive officer of the Institute for International Education in New York. Krasno was also deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Education and has held academic appointments at the University of Chicago, Stanford University, the University of Massachusetts and the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. He has a doctorate from Stanford University.
Pictured in the photo from left to right are Mary Jo Festle, Kaitlyn Day ’08, Richard Krasno, Alyse Knorr ’09, Tori Strange ’07, and President Leo M. Lambert.