Brief Biography of Dr. Julius Seeyle Bixler (1894-1985) – DRAFT
Dr. Julius Seeyle Bixler presided over Colby College during a time of great growth for the institution. His academic example, hard work and skilled leadership during the 1940s and 1950s made him a beloved and highly-respected administrator and colleague.
Bixler was born in Connecticut in 1894 to a Congregational minister and his wife. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Amherst College and his doctorate in Philosophy from Yale. He traveled around the world, studying and lecturing at several renowned universities such as American University in Beirut, the University of Zurich in Switzerland, and the University of Frieburg in Germany. He also taught at Smith College for nine years.
Bixler was a renowned scholar and author before his presidency. Several of his books, including Religion in the Philosophy of William James, Immortality and the Present Mood, and Religion for Free Minds, were very well received in the scholastic community. He published a number of articles in academic journals, contributed many essays to books and other scholarly volumes and corresponded with Albert Schweitzer and other notable philosophers.
Bixler was the Acting Dean of Harvard Divinity School when the Colby Board of Trustees approached him with the offer of the presidency after President Franklin Johnson’s term. He accepted, taking over the position on the first of July 1942. He was the sixteenth president of Colby. During his eighteen-year term, he made many changes. He increased Colby’s endowment from less than three million in 1942 to eight and a half million by 1959. He built a total of twenty-seven new structures on campus, including the Bixler Art and Music Center completed in 1959. He attracted esteemed scholars to the faculty and presided over a comprehensive reorganization of college administration. He inaugurated the Parent’s Day/Weekend tradition, the first of which was held in 1948. He inaugurated a series of three significant and popular academic colloquia in the 1950s, raising the intellectual standards of campus life and drawing full participation from the student body. He established the Book of the Year program, where a panel of students and teachers chose a book that the entire campus reads and discusses in class. Bixler also established the Office of Admissions in 1959 and he founded the Art and Music departments.
After retiring from the Colby presidency in 1960, Bixler taught at the Thammasart University of Bangkok, the University of Hawaii, Carleton College, and the University of Maine-Orono. He served as a member of the Board of Trustees for Colby College, Smith College, and Amherst College. Bixler passed away on March 28, 1985 in Weston, Massachusetts, at the age of ninety.
SOURCES CONSULTED
Boston Globe obituary, 30 March 1985, Julius Seelye Bixler Collection, Colbiana Collection
Colby College press release (Peter Kingsley), 29 March 1985, Julius Seelye Bixler Collection, Colbiana Collection
Ernest Marriner, A History of Colby College (1963)