EDITOR'S NOTE: The Kennesaw State Department of Athletics will honor its past this weekend when it holds its Hall Fame ceremony prior to Saturday's football game against Gardner-Webb. The ceremony will take place at the KSU Sports & Entertainment Park beginning at 10 a.m. The list of inductees includes Dr. Thomas Keene and the 1995 softball team that won the NCAA Division II national championship. Over the next two days, KSUOwls.com will profile the latest inductees.
 
Hall of Fame

KENNESAW, Ga. – Dr. Thomas Keene served as a professor and chair at Kennesaw State for more than 40 years, including nine as chair of the Kennesaw State Athletics Board, while serving as a leader in KSU's transition from Division II to Division I. He also helped lay the foundation of academic performance and achievement of student-athletes, and was instrumental in establishing the strong supporting relationship between academics and athletics at Kennesaw State. He addition­ally served as division chair of the Football Exploratory Committee.
 
"Tom Keene is a Kennesaw State icon," Scott Whitlock, Kennesaw State senior associate athletics director, said. "As a history professor he touched the lives of thousands of students in the classroom, and as the founding chair of the KSU Athletics Board, he helped lay the foundation on which Owls Athletics now stands and that will touch thousands of student-athletes for generations.  Dr. Keene is known as a man of character; his induction to our Hall of Fame is so fitting and well deserved."
 
Dr. Keene began his service to KSU as a professor of history in 1973. In 1980 he received a Fulbright Fellowship for a study/travel seminar in India and spent the 1986-87 academic year in China as the first participant in a faculty exchange that has continued between Kennesaw State and Jiangsu Province ever since.
 
He chaired the USG Asia Council, which facilitates multi-institu­tion Asia-related activity within the System. From that position he organized the first of the USG-sponsored faculty development seminars in 1994. Keene directed the KSU International Center (now the Institute for Global Initiatives) from 1988-2003. In 2007 he received the KSU Foundation's Distinguished Faculty Service Award.
 
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