An expert in transportation history and American railroads will serve the University of Missouri-Rolla history and political science department as the fifth Maxwell C. Weiner Distinguished Professor of Humanities.

H. Roger Grant, 2005 Weiner Professor at UMR.

Dr. H. Roger Grant, a Centennial Professor of history at Clemson University, will begin his duties in January 2005.

Grant’s expertise is in the field of American history, especially the Progressive Era. He is recognized as a leading authority on transportation history and American railroads.

While at UMR, Grant will teach U.S. Transportation History.

Grant has written or edited 22 books, including Getting Around: Exploring Transportation History, published in 2002 by Krieger Publishing Co. His most recent book, Follow the Flag: A History of the Wabash Railroad Company, was published in 2004 by Northern Illinois University Press.

Grant earned Ph.D. and master of arts degrees from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1970 and 1967, respectively. He earned a bachelor of arts degree from Simpson College in 1966. In 2003, Simpson College awarded him the Doctor of Humane Letters. He has taught in the Clemson history department since 1996, serving as chair of the department until 2001. Prior to that, he taught at the University of Akron from 1970 to 1996.

UMR’s Maxwell C. Weiner Distinguished Professorship in Humanities, established by an estate gift to the university in 1999, is to be rotated annually or biennially among academic departments in the UMR College of Arts and Sciences. Grant will be working and teaching as a member of the history and political science department at UMR.

Weiner was a graduate of UMR. He also studied at the University of Hawaii and at Washington University in St. Louis. He was retired from Westinghouse Electric Corp.

Previous Maxwell C. Weiner Distinguished Professors were Dr. Gilberto Perez, who served in the English department from 2000 to 2001; Dr. Charles Alexander, who served in the history and political science department in 2002; Dr. Caroline Whitbeck, who served in the philosophy department in 2003; and Dr. Anne Goodwyn-Jones, who served in the English department in 2004.