F. Champion Ward

F. CHAMPION WARD - a former Vice President of the Ford Foundation and a 30-year resident of Greenwich before moving to a retirement community in North Branford, died on July 2. He was 96.

Ward was a prominent educator. He served as Chancellor of the New School for Social Research and was a former Dean of the College of the University of Chicago. At the Ford Foundation he was Vice President for Education and Research. From 1954-59 he and his family lived in India, where he was educational consultant to the government.

In Greenwich Ward served on the Board of Education and was a member of the Democratic Town Committee.

He was born on December 30, 1910 in New Brunswick, N.J., and spent his boyhood and college years in Oberlin, Ohio, where his father, Clarence, was headof the college's art department. After graduating from OberlinCollege and acquiring a master's degree in philosophy in 1936, Ward earned his doctorate at Yale University. From 1937 to 1945 he taught philosophy and psychology at Denison University and, as Associate Dean, trained military officers for the army's de-Nazification efforts in Germany

After the war, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago and worked with Chancellor Robert Maynard Hutchins in efforts to reform higher education by establishing a new interdisciplinary college with a core humanities curriculum.

Ward took leave from the University of Chicago to go to India for the Ford Foundation. On his return, he directed the Ford Foundation's Overseas Development Program for the Middle East and Africa and later became the Foundation's Deputy Vice President for International Programs.

In the 1960's Ward was Chairman of the White House Task Force on the Education of Gifted Persons. He was also a member of UNESCO's International Commission on the Development of Education.

After his retirement from the Ford Foundation in 1977, Ward served as a consultant at the World Bank, the UA-Columbia Cable Television, the Association of American Universities, and the Connecticut Board of Higher Education. He also worked with the MacArthur Foundation in the development of its "Genius" grants.

In 1980, Ward was appointed Chancellor of the New School for Social Research and Acting Dean of its graduate faculty. He was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of General Education, editor of "The Idea and Practice of General Education", and the author of numerous articles and reviews.

Ward is survived by his wife, Duira Baldinger Ward of Evergreen Woods in North Branford, his children Geoffrey Ward of New York City, Andrew Ward of Seattle, and Helen Ward of Portland, Maine, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

There will be a memorial service on Sunday, August 12, at 3:30 p.m. in the auditorium of Evergreen Woods, 88 Notch Hill Road, North Branford, CT.