Charles J. Turck

Charles J. Turck
Turck c. 1931
13th President of Centre College
In office June 3, 1927 – July 1, 1936
Preceded by	R. Ames Montgomery
Succeeded by	Robert L. McLeod
9th President of Macalester College
In office September 1939 – 1958
Preceded by	John Carey Acheson
Succeeded by	Harvey Mitchell Rice
Personal details
Born	(1890-09-13)September 13, 1890 New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
Died	January 12, 1989(1989-01-12) (aged 98) Arlington, Virginia, U.S.
Resting place	Bellevue Cemetery
Spouse(s)	Emma Fuller ​ ​ (m. 1914; died 1978)​ Nancy Head ​ (m. 1983)​
Education	Tulane University (BA) Columbia University (LLB)
Signature

Charles Joseph Turck (September 13, 1890 – January 12, 1989) was an American lawyer, educator, and academic administrator who was the president of Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, and Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. A native of New Orleans, Turck attended Tulane University before graduating from Columbia University with a law degree in 1913. After practicing law in New York City for three years, he taught law at Tulane and Vanderbilt University. He took his first administrative position when he was named dean of the University of Kentucky College of Law in 1924, a job he held for three years until his election to Centre's presidency. He spent nine years leading the school, from June 1927 to July 1936, during which time he continued plans to emphasize academics over athletics and gained it admission to the Association of American Colleges and Universities. He left Centre for a position in the state tax commission under Governor Happy Chandler and also took an administrative role in the social education department of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America later that year.

Turck went to Macalester in 1938 to give a lecture; at that time, the school was nearly a year into a presidential search to replace John Carey Acheson. He was offered the job eight months after his talk. He accepted and took office in September 1939, becoming the school's ninth president. There, he worked to distance Macalester from its evangelical roots and emphasize the strengths of its liberal arts curriculum and led the school through World War II. During the war, he spoke out against isolationism, broadly favored by the student body, and was accused by J. B. Matthews of being a communist spy.^[1] Macalester's enrollment saw a drastic increase after the war due to the G.I. Bill as the school enrolled over six hundred veterans in 1947. He resigned the presidency in 1958 having held it for nineteen years, longer than any other Macalester president as of 2024^[update].