In July of 1991, Dr. Arthur J. Lendo succeeded Dr. Raymond C. Lewin as Peirce College president and immediately set about modernizing Peirce College's learning platforms for working adult learners. Peirce needed to establish itself as the college for working adults, and Dr. Lendo's great vision of taking the college to the student made it happen. During his tenure, he guided Peirce's evolution into a leading-edge 21st-century institution with national scope and international reach.

At the time he accepted the presidency, Dr. Lendo was already widely recognized as a trailblazer in developing innovative academic programming, marketing and development. He brought 23 years of administrative and teaching experience to Peirce College and was abundantly familiar with management development, continuing education and cooperative education programs. His educational background included a Ph.D in education administration with a minor in organizational studies from Boston College, a master's degree in higher education administration from American University and a bachelor's of finance from the University of Notre Dame.

Prior to joining Peirce, Dr. Lendo had been Dean of the University College of Philadelphia's St. Joseph's University since 1985. His leadership roles also included directorial positions at Northeastern University, Boston College and American University as well as time spent teaching in New Jersey. A published author whose works were feature in Thomson-Reuters and Aspatore Books publications, Dr. Lendo would go on to have the distinction of presenting a major policy paper at Oxford University in 2004. The paper focused on asynchronous online learning, a college delivery platform that represented the future of higher education.

Dr. Lendo's 18-year tenure at Peirce was perhaps most highlighted by his successful migration of the school from a strictly two-year associate degree-granting institution to a full four-year college with bachelor's degrees. During his time as president he proudly conferred 7,234 degrees across three key program areas (Business, Legal and Technology), equipping degree holders with the practical skills and knowledge needed for successful careers in those fields of study.

Transitioning Peirce from a junior college to an accredited baccalaureate institution may be Dr. Lendo's most well-known accomplishment as president, but it was certainly not his only great deed in service of the College's working adult learners. In addition to overseeing extensive renovations to the school's physical campus and bringing the College to students through Peirce's corporate college initiative, Dr. Lendo was also relentless in his development and implementation of what was at the time a very different and cutting-edge learning environment -- the internet.

Dr. Lendo was responsible for the development of the acclaimed Peirce Online, a distance learning platform offering students complete degree programs entirely online. Internet-based coursework remains so popular today at Peirce (over 70 percent of Peirce students take online classes) that it's easy in 2015 to take this accomplishment for granted. But when Dr. Lendo introduced completely online college degrees in 2000, there was nothing else quite like it.

Shortly before his retirement on June 30, 2009, Dr. Lendo proudly summed up the position of strength both he and the Peirce College community had established. “Peirce's many accomplishments this year, and over the past many years, are a tribute to a dedicated faculty, staff and administration as well as our outstanding student body and alumni. As a result of the community's exceptional performance, the College is well positioned to maximize learning opportunities for students and employers in the 21st century.“