A former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a special consultant to the State Department on China, president of the American Council on Education, chairman of National Educational Television, board member of IBM World Trade, and the assistant dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Business, Case is best known as the former president of New York’s Colgate University, where he developed the idea of the “core curriculum” for university students.
The concept emphasized a more broad-based approach to education, rather than making freshmen focus immediately on their majors. The approach was widely adopted around the country. Case died July 18 in his sleep. He was 99.