Convocation to Kick Off New Academic Year at Washington and Lee The event will be held at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 2 on the Front Lawn with remarks by Interim President Kenneth P. Ruscio ’76.

By Brian Laubscher
August 20, 2026

The Washington and Lee University community is invited to celebrate a new academic year with Convocation at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 2, on the Front Lawn. Dinner will follow on Cannan Green. This event is a great opportunity to meet the first-year undergraduate and law students as well as to welcome seniors and third-year law students back for their final year.

Kenneth P. Ruscio ’76, interim president of the university, will deliver this year’s remarks, titled “Into the Heart of It.”

As the university embarks on a new year, Ruscio’s address will ask the campus community to consider more than the work ahead and to also reflect on what makes up W&L — its purpose, character and values.

“I’ll be inviting us to consider the qualities that define W&L,” said Ruscio. “As the university goes through this transition period, it’s an opportune time to step back and reflect. Amidst all the work we need to do in the coming months, I want us to ask what guides and defines the university and to think together about our future as well our past. It is especially important that we do so during this time of uncertainty throughout higher education.”

The W&L community can also watch Ruscio’s address via livestream.

Ruscio served as president of the university from 2006-2016 and returned to the university as interim president on July 1, 2026, a role he will hold until the university’s next president is named and seated.

During his tenure as president, Ruscio oversaw significant expansion of the university’s scholarship and financial aid programs, including the establishment of the Johnson Program in Leadership and Integrity and the creation of The W&L Promise. He also presided over several critical projects, including the $50 million renovation and restoration of W&L’s historic Colonnade; the creation of the Roger Mudd Center for Ethics and the J. Lawrence Connolly Center for Entrepreneurship; and the $66 million Lenfest Challenge, which created 15 new endowed faculty chairs, 10 term professorships and improved faculty compensation. Several new facilities were constructed during his tenure, including the Hillel House, the upper-division housing village, the natatorium and the Center for Global Learning, which the Board of Trustees named in Ruscio’s honor in 2016. In addition, the university made extensive renovations to first-year housing, Leyburn Library and Lewis Hall and developed the Duchossois Athletic and Recreation Center.

A distinguished scholar of democratic theory and public policy, Ruscio earned a Bachelor of Arts in politics from Washington and Lee (1976) and a Master of Public Administration (1978) and Ph.D. in public affairs and public administration (1983), both from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

He was a postdoctoral research scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles and taught at both Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the University of Kansas before returning to his alma mater, where he held staff and faculty positions as professor of politics, associate dean of the Williams School of Commerce, Economics and Politics and dean of freshmen.

Ruscio served as the University of Richmond’s dean of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies from 2002 to 2006 before becoming president of Washington and Lee. He has since served as president of the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges from 2017 to 2018 and as a senior distinguished lecturer at the Jepson School from 2019 to 2023.