The Joyce Foundation mourns the passing of Board Member Emeritus Robert G. Bottoms, PhD. Dr. Bottoms served as a Joyce board member for 26 years, retiring in 2023. He died in Athens, Georgia on Tuesday, January 27.
Dr. Bottoms – Bob to family, friends, and colleagues – brought to the Board decades of experience in higher education and was a great champion of the Foundation’s mission of advancing racial equity and economic mobility in the Great Lakes region. He was President Emeritus of DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana and served as DePauw’s first director of the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics. During his 22-year tenure as DePauw president, Dr. Bottoms led major efforts to diversify the university community and to elevate the university’s commitment to the sciences and to moral reflection. In retirement, Dr. Bottoms established an endowment for international study with his wife, Gwen, supporting study abroad experiences for students of color with demonstrated financial need. He also served as interim president of the Bexley-Seabury Seminary.
Dr. Bottoms was a native of Birmingham, Alabama, and a graduate of Emory and Vanderbilt Universities. In addition to his wife, he is survived by two children and four grandchildren.
About The Joyce Foundation
Joyce is a nonpartisan, private foundation that invests in evidence-informed public policies and strategies to advance racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation in the Great Lakes region.