By Howard Wilkinson
The Cincinnati Enquirer

OXFORD - Ronald Crutcher, a classical musician and provost/vice president of academic affairs at his alma mater, Miami University, will leave Oxford to become president of Wheaton College, a small liberal arts college in Norton, Mass.

The 57-year-old native Cincinnatian, a 1965 graduate of Woodward High School, will become the first African-American president of the 1,500-student college, founded in 1834.

"It's going to be a great opportunity," said Crutcher, who completed his undergraduate studies at Miami in 1969 and went on to become the first cellist to earn a doctorate in music at Yale University.

On July 15, Crutcher will take over an institution that was an all-women's college until 1987.

Crutcher said that even with a coed student body, Wheaton "has made a conscious effort to continue to be committed to gender equity and has kept its feminist outlook, which I find impressive."

Crutcher is cellist in the renowned Klemperer Trio. He was gifted as a teenager, winning the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's Young Artists competition at age 17.

He returned to Oxford in 1999 to become provost and vice president for academic affairs, where he established Miami's Center for American and World Studies and played a key role in securing a $5 million gift for establishment of Miami's Institute for Ethical Leadership.

Crutcher's career took him to the University of Texas, where he was director of music; the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he was vice president of academic affairs, and the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, where he was an associate vice chancellor.

Crutcher will be the third Miami administrator to leave in the past five years to take the top job at a university

"Miami has always been known as 'the cradle of coaches,' but we're rapidly becoming the cradle of presidents, too," said Miami president James Garland.

E-mail hwilkinson@enquirer.com