This is not the first time of transition in Wagner College’s 139-year history — nor is Angelo Araimo the first person charged to lead Wagner through such a time. Here’s a quick look at four of the presidents who’ve been faced with the demands of change on The Hill and have steered us through to the other side.
Adolf Henry Holthusen
1918-1925
Adolf Holthusen led Wagner College through the greatest transition it had experienced since its founding: the move from Rochester, New York, to Staten Island.
A Lutheran pastor and the son of the headmaster of a Lutheran day school on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Rev. Holthusen and his young family moved into the brand-new Kairos House when he took over the 42-student seminary prep school in 1918.
Under his leadership, enrollment doubled to 84 students, and our junior-college unit evolved into a four-year program. To accommodate the larger student body, a new dormitory was opened in 1923: South Hall, later renamed Parker Hall.
After his presidency, Holthusen became pastor of a church in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he served until September 1942, just three months before his death.
Clarence Charles Stoughton
1935-1945
Clarence Stoughton, known to his students familiarly as “Prof,” was the first president of Wagner College who was not a Lutheran minister. A former reporter and University of Rochester graduate, “Prof” Stoughton joined the Wagner community as an English and history teacher in 1919.
Stoughton served the college in a number of roles before becoming president in 1935. Noted for his vocal opposition to the growing Fascist threat in Europe, he led Wagner through the war years, overseeing the creation of a night-school program as well as our nursing school.
After leaving Grymes Hill, Stoughton became president of Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. He died in 1975.
Walter Consuelo Langsam
1945-1952
Stoughton’s successor, Walter Consuelo Langsam, was born in Vienna, Austria, to a Jewish family that had converted to Lutheranism. Brought to America by his parents when he was just 10 months old, Langsam was raised in Manhattan’s Yorkville neighborhood.
A historian educated at City College and Columbia, Langsam was recruited during World War II as a spymaster by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services. Among his agents was a “fisherman” in the Baltic city of Peenemünde, where Nazi Germany developed its rocket systems.
Langsam led Wagner through its period of greatest numeric growth (from 440 students in 1945 to 1,942 students in 1951), the purchase of our West Campus, and the construction of Guild Hall and the Sutter Gymnasium.
He later served as president of Gettysburg College and the University of Cincinnati. Langsam died in 1985.
Norman R. Smith
1988-2002
Norman Smith came to Wagner College in 1988 from Harvard University, having also served in administrative posts at Drexel, Philadelphia University and Moore College of Art and Design.
Hired as Wagner’s president with the expectation by some that he would wind down the school’s troubled operations, instead he took steps to shore up the college’s finances, rebuild its admissions program, recruit top-flight administrative and faculty talent, and move Wagner to “top tier” status. During his presidency, two major expansion projects were completed, the Spiro Sports Center and Pape Admissions House, in addition to major upgrades to the campus grounds and facilities.
At the end of his tenure, Wagner’s Board of Trustees named Norman Smith president emeritus.
Smith was president of Richmond University in London, England, from 2002 to 2007. Since then, he has served as interim president at three institutions while they searched for new leadership: Dowling College, Suffolk University and Elmira College (where he was also awarded emeritus status). 
