Edward P. Reagen
Edward Reagen, professor emeritus of economics, died peacefully at his home in Naples, Fla., on Sept. 24, 2002.
A Skidmore faculty member in economics for 21 years, Ted earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Western Reserve University and a Ph.D. from Indiana University. He also studied at the London School of Economics, during a sabbatical leave from Skidmore.
Joining the department in 1960, he became its chair in 1975. His collegewide leadership included chairing the Committee on Educational Policy and Planning and—applying his enduring interest in non-Western cultures—serving as an early proponent of the Asian Regional Studies Program. His research into comparative economics led him to Tung Hai University in Taiwan as a Fulbright scholar, and to the study of Far Eastern art and culture under a grant from the New York State Education Department. He also spent a summer at Harvard University researching Japan’s economy, and he was the recipient of a Ford Foundation fellowship for study at Princeton University in 1961.
Ted directed the first analysis of Skidmore’s financial impact on the community of Saratoga Springs, with assistance from one of his independent-study students. Ted had a strong positive influence on his students, as one of them mentioned in endorsing his promotion to department chair: “He possesses genuine devotion not only to helping students learn the principles of economics, but also to stimulating creative thinking in his classes.” New York State’s budget director, Carole Chulick Stone ’69 (profiled in a 2001 Scope article), warmly remembered Ted’s ability to promote students’ academic development in the classroom while nurturing them personally with dinners at his home.
Ted’s wife, Lillian, worked in Skidmore’s Lucy Scribner Library for 13 years; she survives him.