James Charles Moeser

Dr. James Moeser has been Chancellor Emeritus at UNC at Chapel Hill since 2000 where he has become a nationally recognized champion of greater accessibility to higher education for low-income students and has overseen significant enhancements to the undergraduate program and an unprecedented physical transformation of the campus. He also served as Chancellor of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln from 1996-2000. Formerly, he was Dean of Pennsylvania State University's College of Art and Architecture. At the age of twenty-seven, he was appointed to the faculty of the University of Kansas as the chair of the Department of Organ. In addition, he served as organist-choirmaster of Plymouth Congregational Church in Lawrence.  Over the next twenty years, he built a reputation as one of the nation’s leading recitalists, church musicians, and teachers.  As a concert artist, he was represented by the Lilian Murtagh (later Karen McFarlane) Concert Management, the nation’s leading presenter of organ recitalists.  He concertized widely in the U. S. and Europe.  In 1975, he became the dean of the KU School of Fine Arts, beginning a career that gradually led him into administration.   In 1984, he was named to the Carl and Ruth Althaus Distinguished Professorship in Organ, the first academic dean at KU ever awarded an endowed faculty position. He is considered an expert concert organist and prides himself on his commitment to public higher education is manifest in his defense of academic freedom in the university community. His tenure at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been marked by a strong stand for academic freedom.