Seeking to honor and sustain the extraordinary richness of poetry in Kenyon’s history, Robert P. Hubbard ’53, a philanthropist and retired teacher from Walpole, New Hampshire, funded the Robert P. Hubbard Professorship in Poetry with a gift of $1.5 million in the year 2000. Hubbard, who transferred to Kenyon after two years at Harvard College, was a psychology major and president of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. This poetry chair is focused on Kenyon’s past and its traditions while providing for the flexibility the College must have to adapt to the conditions that may prevail over the years, said Hubbard. I look forward … to the fulfillment of the chair’s goals, with a sense of curiosity and high adventure.
We are most grateful to Bob Hubbard, a deeply learned man and an acute judge of art and literature, for establishing this chair, said former President Robert A. Oden Jr. Creative writing in general and poetry in particular, are human gifts we deeply honor at Kenyon, and ones which have been areas of strength at the College for generations. This tradition we can continue into the future in significant measure because of Bob Hubbard’s generosity.