Ursinus picks new president, a political economist

Ursinus College on Thursday named the dean of economics and finance at Claremont McKenna College in California as its next president.

S. Brock Blomberg, 48, a political economist who studies terrorism, replaces Lucien "Terry" Winegar, who had been serving as interim president since Bobby Fong's death in September.

Blomberg takes over July 1 as the 17th president of Ursinus, a 1,600-student liberal arts college in Collegeville.

"Our objective was to discover someone who could embrace the Ursinus DNA, our values and what we are about, who is passionate about the liberal arts, and comes with highly regarded leadership experience," Michael Marcon, a college trustee and search committee chair, said in a statement.

Blomberg graduated magna cum laude from the University of Tampa, and received master's and doctoral degrees in economics from Johns Hopkins University. In addition to being a dean at the highly selective college, he also is a senior research fellow for the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events at the University of Southern California, which has conducted research on the 9/11 attacks.

Before Claremont McKenna, which is east of Los Angeles, he was on the faculty at Wellesley College and a visiting scholar at Harvard University.

Blomberg also has held positions at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the International Monetary Fund, and the President's Council of Economic Advisers and served in the military for eight years. He was the U.S. representative to the Economic Committee for Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation.

A native of El Paso, Texas, he started Claremont McKenna's first master's program, at the college's School of Economics and Finance; created an economic and entrepreneurial leadership program in Silicon Valley; and built a global economic and leadership program in Asia, the college said.

He has four children, three of them college age.

Ursinus, a private college, did not release his salary.