Notable Alumni

Hanover College graduates are successful in every profession imaginable, including law, science, medicine, business, politics and the creative arts. They are often leaders and innovators in their fields. Here are just a few of the college’s many prominent alumni, sorted in alphabetical order by last name.

NOTABLE ALUMNI

• John M. Bloss 1860, third President of Oregon State University.
• Joyce Hopewell Brinkman 1966, First poet laureate of Indiana.
• James Graham Brown 1902, philanthropist, businessman and real estate developer.
• John Merle Coulter 1870, botanist; professor at Hanover College, Wabash College and the University of Chicago; President of Indiana University and Lake Forest University.
• Stanley Coulter 1870, Dean of School of Sciences at Purdue University.
• William A. Cullop 1878, member of United States House of Representatives from Indiana.
• Chris Culver, (pen name) crime novelist.
• Thomas Cleland Dawson 1888, diplomat.
• Brett Dietz 2004, Arena Football League quarterback for Tampa Bay Storm.
• Bob Donewald 1964, basketball head coach at Illinois State and Western Michigan; assistant coach of 1976 Indiana Hoosiers national champions.
• William Donner 1887, steel industry businessman and philanthropist.
• Denny Dorrel 2001, football coach, Bluffton University.
• Ebenezer Dumont 1836, member of U.S. House of Representatives from Indiana and Brigadier general of Union Army during American Civil War.
• Peter Dunn 2000, financial author, radio host, television personality, and speaker.
• William M. Dunn, member of U.S. House of Representatives, Judge Advocate of General of the United States Army, and delegate to 1850 Constitution of Indiana Convention.
• Jonathan Edwards 1835, first President of Washington and Jefferson College.
• Harriet Elliott 1910, educator and civic leader.
• William Hayden English, politician, member of U.S. House of Representatives, candidate for Vice President of the United State and Speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives.
• Walter L. Fisher 1883, United State Secretary of the Interior from 1911 to 1913.
• Jim Green 1972, a computer scientist who reduced wireless communication time to usable levels.
• Woody Harrelson 1983, actor in films and TV series Cheers; three-time Academy Award nominee.
• Charles Sherrod Hatfield 1904, judge of United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals.
• Jane Huffman Hayes 1983, Awarded the “Most Daring Research Award” by NASA.
• Michael Henderickson 1983, Executive Vice President for feature production, 20th Century Fox Film Corporation.
• Philip Hedrick 1964, American population geneticist.
• Thomas Andrews Hendricks 1841, 21st Vice President of the United States, Governor of Indiana, U.S. Senator, member of U.S. House of Representatives, delegate to 1851 Indiana Constitutional Convention.
• Eric Holcomb 1990, 51st Lieutenant Governor of Indiana, 51st and current Governor of Indiana Jan 9, 2017 – present.
• Peter Kassig, an aid worker, taken hostage and beheaded by Islamic State.
• Walter LaFeber 1955, a historian at Cornell University.
• James A. Lake 1965, Retired Associate Laboratory Director of Nuclear Programs, Idaho National Laboratory.
• Mike Leonard 1984, Head Football Coach for Franklin College.
• Bertha Lewis 1972, CEO and Chief Organizer of ACORN.
• Colonel Leslie MacDill 1909, early aviation pioneer and US Army Air Corps officer, namesake of MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, headquarters of US CENTCOM.
• Thom Mayer 1973, Command physician at the Pentagon during 911 and Medical Director of the NFL Players Association (NFL).
• Charles Kirwan McHarry 1936, Journalist, drama critic, wrote “On the Town” column for the New York Daily News.
• James W. Near 1960, Chairman and CEO of Wendy’s International, Inc. from 1986-1996.
• John Merle Newhouse 1872, Representative and Senator, State of Indiana.
• Stephen Olvey 1965, Co-Director of the International Motorsports and Vehicular Injury Research Center.
• John Davis Paris 1833, builder of missionary churches on the island of Hawai’i.
• James Kennedy Patterson 1856, first President of University of Kentucky.
• Leah Peelman 2006, Fourth place in NCAA III National 10K.
• Lafe Pence 1877, member of United States House of Representatives from Colorado.
• Mike Pence 1981, 48th Vice President of the United States, 50th Governor of Indiana, and former member of U.S. House of Representatives.
• Albert G. Porter, Governor of Colorado and member of U.S. House of Representatives.
• John Resig 2001, Co-founder of Resignation Media, LLC in August 2007 and launched theCHIVE.com in November 2008.
• Carol Warner Shields 1957, Pulitzer Prize-winning author.
• John Shoemaker 1964, Retired Executive Vice President of Sun Microsystems.
• Micah Shrewsberry 1999, head coach for the Penn State Nittany Lions.
• Bob Schults 1964, Former CEO of Shaklee.
• Monica Sone 1946, author of noted memoir Nisei Daughter.
• Reginald H. Thomson 1877, a civil engineer who designed modern Seattle.
• Robert J. Tracewell 1874, member of U.S. House of Representatives and Comptroller of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
• Tony Vittorio 1988, college baseball coach at IPFW and Dayton.
• Harold K. Voris 1962, Curator and Head of the Division of Amphibians and Reptiles, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.
• Jim Ward 1981, Former President of LucasArts.
• William Ross Wallace 1836, poet.
• George F. Whitworth 1938, Presbyterian missionary, founder of Whitworth College and President of University of Washington.
• Harvey W. Wiley 1867, chemist involved with the passage of Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.
• Wilbur Young 1930, Indiana’s Superintendent of Schools from 1951-1959. Under his administration, he moved the schools in Indiana to consolidation, improved graduation rates, and authored a book on building better schools. He made headline nationwide news fighting McCarthyism keeping books such as Little Red Riding Hood and others on the bookshelves of the schools.