James Koch
James Koch
James V. Koch, president emeritus of Old Dominion University and a former faculty member and department chair of Economics at Illinois State University, will receive an honorary doctoral degree during Illinois State’s Founders Day Convocation on Feb. 19.
A native of Springfield, Koch holds a B.A. degree from Illinois State and a Ph.D. in economics from Northwestern University. He was on the Illinois State Department of Economics faculty from 1967 to 1978, serving as department chairman for the final six years.
Currently Koch is the Board of Visitors professor of economics at Old Dominion. He also held teaching and research positions at California State University at Los Angeles, the University of Grenoble (France), Brown University, Rhode Island College, Ball State University, the University of Hawaii, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia and the University of Montana.
Koch was president of the University of Montana for four years before going to Old Dominion in 1990. He retired as president in 2001. He has been awarded honorary degrees by Yeungnam University in Korea and Toyo University and Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan.
The author of 10 books (and under contract for an 11th), Koch is the author of many articles and monographs in the field of economics and has been the subject of many articles both as an economist and a university president. In research funded by the Exxon Foundation, he was identified as one of the 100 most effective college presidents in the U.S.
