Terrell, former WSU president, dies in Sequim

Published 12:09 pm Thursday, March 20, 2014

Sequim Gazette staff

Sequim resident Glen Terrell, former Washington State University president, died at the age of 93.

The university announced Terrell’s death Friday, Aug. 30.

Terrell was Washington State’s seventh president and served from 1967-1985.

University officials said Terrell was instrumental in the creation of the WSU Foundation in 1979 to increase private support for the school.

Terrell started his career in academia as a psychology instructor at Florida State University and worked as an associate professor at FSU and the University of Colorado. He was named dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1963. He was selected by the Board of Regents as president of Washington State University in 1967.

When Terrell arrived at WSU in 1967, the campus had 9,000 students.

“It was shocking to me to learn when I went to WSU that they didn’t have a foundation,” Terrell said in a 2009 interview with the Sequim Gazette. Instead, each school within the university had its own supporters and didn’t want to give them up.

Terrell applied his negotiating skills and in 1979 the WSU Foundation was established.

Two buildings on the WSU campus are named for the former president.

He and his wife, Gail, moved to Happy Valley in the mid-2000s.

In addition to his wife, Terrell is survived by two children — Francine and William Glenn Terrell III, both of Seattle — and two grandchildren.