About James Cousins, Ph.D.
James Cousins, Ph.D. is the eighth president of Wilkes University. Appointed in 2026,
President Cousins brings to the role a distinguished record of academic leadership
and institutional transformation built across two decades in higher education.
Prior to joining Wilkes, President Cousins served as the 36th president of Kentucky
Wesleyan College, where he led a period of significant institutional renewal marked
by financial discipline, academic expansion, strategic focus and enhanced community
partnership.
More about President Cousins
More about President Cousins
Under his leadership, the college achieved a number of milestones, including achieving
Level III status and launching its first graduate program as well as its first comprehensive
strategic plan in nearly a decade. He expanded partnership-based revenue and workforce-aligned
academic opportunities, including the college’s participation in HealthForce Kentucky,
a $38 million state-supported, multi-institution initiative designed to advance healthcare
workforce development. He also approved the addition of new athletics programs and
supported new marketing and revenue partnerships to strengthen student recruitment,
institutional visibility, and community engagement.
President Cousins also elevated online learning at Kentucky Wesleyan throughout his
tenure, strengthening program development, course quality, student support and enrollment
outcomes. During his presidency, the college’s online bachelor’s degree program rose
to No. 1 among private colleges in Kentucky in the U.S. News & World Report online
bachelor’s rankings. He also led a campus master planning process that connected both
academic priorities and auxiliary revenue, as well as community needs and infrastructure,
resulting in campus improvements and a landmark agreement with the Owensboro YMCA
to locate a childcare center on the college's property.
Before his appointment as president, he served as provost and vice president of academic
affairs at Kentucky Wesleyan, where he designed a first-year retention program that
produced measurable gains in student success, led the college’s SACSCOC fifth-year
interim report and developed institutional partnerships that created expedited graduate
and career pathways for students. Earlier in his career, he served as a tenured member
of the history faculty and associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at Western
Michigan University, with responsibility for student success, academic advising, accreditation
and curricular reform.
President Cousins is active in national and regional higher education leadership.
He was elected to serve in national leadership with the National Council on Education's
Council of Fellows as vice chair and chair-elect, and he serves on the Board of the
McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His broader
service includes board and advisory roles in independent higher education, healthcare
workforce development, economic development and educator preparation.
A historian specializing in the Early American Republic, President Cousins is a published
scholar whose work has appeared in The Journal of Southern History, The Journal of American History, The Historian and other leading publications. He is the author of Horace Holley: Transylvania University and the Making of Liberal Education in the
Early American Republic and co-author of Collaboration and the Future of Education: Preserving the Right to Think and Teach
Historically. His current book project examines the history of American college leadership in
the early nineteenth century.
President Cousins earned his bachelor’s degree from The Ohio State University and
his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky. He and his wife, Carrie, have
one son. Carrie is an entrepreneur who owns and operates coffee shops in Michigan
and Kentucky.
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