Former University of Kentucky President David Roselle dies at 84

Posted by Admin April 15, 2024 Basketball

Former University of Kentucky President David Roselle died on Monday, according to a letter from his family.

Roselle died “after a brief illness,” a draft of an obituary sent by his son, Arthur Roselle, said. He was 84.

In a statement on Monday, current UK President Eli Capilouto called Roselle an “outstanding leader in higher education” who had “a profoundly important and positive impact” on the university.

“His tenure at UK in the late 1980s was marked by innovations in technology, the growth of our institution as a nationally recognized research institutions and a steadfast commitment to integrity in all aspects of our university, even in the face at times of withering criticism,” Capilouto said. “He never wavered in his believe in the mission of institutions like ours and the importance of always doing things the right way.”

Roselle headed UK from 1987-1989, presiding over the school at a time of scandal as its storied basketball program came under NCAA investigation.

The investigation found numerous violations — including a coach paying money to the father of a recruit and another player cheating on a college entrance exam — and resulted in the team being banned from postseason play for two years and from TV appearances for one year.

The biography of Roselle on UK’s website notes that “much of Roselle’s time and attention” at UK was devoted to the basketball program scandal. However, it notes “it is generally believed that his thoroughness and impartiality in conducting the official University investigation of the matter, his forthrightness in replying to questions posed by the Athletics Association inquiries and his decisiveness in acting to right the situation in the basketball program …resulted in the amelioration of the consequent penalty imposed on the program by the NCAA.”

When Roselle left UK to become president of the University of Delaware, one of the UK’s former trustees told The Lexington Herald-Leader that Roselle’s years would be remembered as the “most turbulent” in the school’s history. Roselle largely blamed the shadow of the basketball scandal as making it impossible for him to make improvements at the school.

“The agenda for the University of Kentucky is education, and I had a difficult problem, which was basketball,” he said during a 1989 news conference, The Courier Journal previously reported. “If we would have come out of the basketball situation and gotten into an environment where we could immediately begin to accomplish some of the educational agenda that I had in mind for the institution,” he might have stayed at UK, he added.

When UK named a dormitory after Roselle in 2012, he said he was “surprised” by the decision according to a report from the Lexington Herald-Leader.

During his tenure at UK, Roselle also hired Rick Pitino, who would go on to lead UK’s basketball program to a national title in 1996. Pitino would later serve as the University of Louisville’s coach from 2001-2017 amid that program’s own high-profile scandals.

Born in Vandergrift, Pa., a small town about 30 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, Roselle attended West Chester University before getting a PhD in Mathematics from Duke.

Following his time at UK, Roselle led the University of Delaware for 17 years before becoming the executive director of the Winterhur Museum in Wilmington, Delaware, a role he served for more than 10 years until 2018.

Roselle is survived by his wife, Louise; their son, Arthur and his wife, Paige; their daughter, Cynthia Koenig, and her husband, Trevor; and their five grandchildren, Charles, David and Faye Roselle and Trevor and John Koenig.

Funeral arrangements have yet to be announced.