Education: Appointment of the Week

• Share

To the surprise of no one at the university, New Jersey's Rutgers last week named Dr. Mason Welch Gross, 47, best known for his off-campus success as a TV answer man, as its new president. Big (6 ft. 3 in., 197 Ibs.), mild, mustached Philosophy Teacher Gross joined the 14,000-student university in 1946, has served as provost, vice president and acting president since the school's former head, Dr. Lewis Webster Jones, resigned last August.

For 4½ years Philosopher Gross was the house expert against whom contestants on the now defunct TV show, Two for the Money, gambled with their answers. Gross decided onstage, and without a chance to crib from reference books, whether the answers were correct, seldom had to back down. An extramural job that comes closer to the complexity of his new one: his chairmanship, since 1951, of the New

Jersey state mediation board. The tall professor studied at Harvard, Cambridge and the University of Aberdeen, did combat intelligence work during World War II as a captain in the Army Air Force.

Said Howard A. Smith, chairman of Rutgers' board of governors: "On the basis of our search and the suggestions received from faculty, alumni and students, we came to the inescapable conclusion that we had the man."