Marvin Wachman, 90, leader of four colleges
NEW YORK - Marvin Wachman, a professor of American history who was president of Lincoln and Temple Universities and interim president of two other Pennsylvania colleges, died Dec. 22 at his home in Philadelphia. He was 90.
Mr. Wachman became president of Lincoln, the nation's oldest college established to educate blacks, in 1961, after teaching for 13 years at Colgate University.
Lincoln, founded in 1854 near Philadelphia, had a distinguished educational record but was in some financial and accreditation difficulties. Mr. Wachman, who was white, was reluctant to become president of a black college at the height of the civil rights movement but was persuaded to do so by Thurgood Marshall, a Lincoln alumnus and trustee who in 1967 became a justice of the US Supreme Court.
Mr. Wachman brought in new faculty members, raised money, and increased enrollment, greatly contributing to reestablishing the college's academic credentials.
In 1969, after eight-and-a-half years at Lincoln, he was appointed vice president for academic affairs at Temple and was planning an eventual return to teaching. In 1973, however, he agreed to become Temple's president. There were financial problems there, too, but Mr. Wachman managed to eliminate the university hospital's $50 million debt and establish new campuses in Tokyo and in the Center City area of Philadelphia.
Mr. Wachman, a native of Milwaukee, retired from Temple in 1983. In the 1990s, he was interim president at Albright College, in Reading, Pa., and the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science. 