Arnold Mitchem to deliver LBJ Lecture at Texas State

SAN MARCOS—Arnold Mitchem, president of the Council for Opportunity in Education, will deliver a free public lecture Nov. 8 in conjunction with 40-year anniversary observances of President Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the Higher Education Act at Texas State University-San Marcos.

Mitchem will present “The Higher Education Act: The Nation’s Promise to Low-income Americans” for the Lyndon Baines Johnson Distinguished Lecture Series at 2 p.m. in the LBJ Student Center Teaching Theater on the Texas State campus.

Mitchem graduated from of the University of Southern Colorado in 1965. Before receiving his Ph.D. in Foundations of Education at Marquette University in 1981, he studied European History as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at the University of Wisconsin. He began his career in Milwaukee as director of the Educational Opportunity Program at Marquette from 1969-1986. Prior to serving as director, he was on the history faculty of the university. In 1986, he relocated to Washington, D.C., to represent low-income and disabled students nationally.

Mitchem is the first and only president of the Council for Opportunity in Education. Because of his work, the federally-funded TRIO Programs--the largest discretionary program in the U.S. Department of Education--have expanded by nearly 400 percent and now serves over 872,000 students at over 1,200 colleges and universities.

Mitchem is a member of the Executive Committee of the European Access Network as well as a former trustee of the College Board, and past-president of the Committee for Education Funding, a Washington-based coalition of national education associations that includes the American Council on Education and the Council of Chief State School Officers. He is also a member of the National Advisory Committee, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

Additionally, he sits on the board of the National College Access Network (NCAN). In 1987, Mitchem held the Martin Luther King Jr.-Cesar Chavez-Rosa Parks Professor at Michigan State University and held the Ralph Metcalfe Chair at Marquette University in 1996.

About the LBJ Lecture
The annual Lyndon Baines Johnson Lecture, initiated in 1982 to honor the former president and Texas State graduate, recognizes the importance of education to the continuing prosperity of the nation. Through the series, Texas State works to perpetuate the former president’s high educational ideals by bringing outstanding individuals to campus to meet with students and faculty and present public lectures. Previous lecterns include former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan and Former President Gerald Ford.