Texas Wesleyan President Fred Slabach Inaugurated January 27th

Fred Slabach

A 1979 Mississippi College graduate, Texas Wesleyan University President Fred Slabach will be inaugurated on the Fort Worth campus Friday.

The January 27^th event will feature former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as the keynote speaker. Albright served as the 64^th Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001 and now is president of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation.

MC leaders and friends are extending their inauguration greetings to Slabach, a former Texas Wesleyan law dean and professor with 13 years of experience in legal education. Slabach who grew up in Pike County, Mississippi, began his duties as the university’s president a little over a year ago.

“All our best to Fred Slabach on assuming, formally, the presidency of Texas Wesleyan,” said Ron Howard, MC’s vice president of academic affairs and a longtime political science professor.

“Fred was a superb student at MC, was deeply involved in campus affairs and academically was a superstar,” Howard recalled. “He won the prestigious Truman Fellowship while at Mississippi College.”

After earning his MC diploma, Slabach received a degree from the University of Mississippi School of Law before getting a master of laws from the Columbia University School of Law in New York.

In late 2010, the Mississippi native was named the 20^th president at Texas Wesleyan after serving as executive secretary and chief executive officer of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation in Washington, D.C.

At the inauguration, Slabach will unveil a strategic plan to focus on preparing students to become critical thinkers using analytical reasoning, school officials say in a TWU news release. The plan also makes a priority of providing graduate programs to students juggling work and families.

Slabach’s inauguration “is a seminal moment in the history of Texas Wesleyan University,” said Kenneth H. Jones, Jr., chairman of the institution’s board of trustees.

With 3,376 students, the 122-year-old university in the Lone Star State is a Methodist institution.

Texas Wesleyan Student Government Association President Bradden Van Noy commends the job Slabach is doing on the Fort Worth campus.”President Slabach’s dedication to the students is unwavering,” said Van Noy, a political science major.”He truly is a student-oriented president.”

Completing work on a facilities master plan expected to be finished this year, the TWU leader also stays busy on the home front. He and his wife, Melany, an award-winning author, are the parents of twin teen-age sons and a daughter.

Retired Mississippi College administrator Doc Quick fondly remembers Slabach as an excellent student who stayed active as a singer in the university’s show choir. “Fred was a very talented young man who was sharp as a tack.”