Renowned civil engineer Clement Clarence Williams was Lehigh’s seventh president.

He came to Lehigh from the University of Iowa, where he was dean of the college of engineering. Earlier, he had worked as highway, bridge and railroad engineer, including for a time with the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western railroad in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and in various roles at other universities.

At Lehigh, undergraduate enrollment rose to an all-time high under Williams, surpassing 2,000 students in 1938. Richards and Drinker residential houses, the Ullmann wing of the Chandler Chemistry Laboratory, and Grace Hall, the first arena-type facility on campus, were built. (Grace Hall was a gift of then-Board Chair Eugene G. Grace, an 1899 graduate.)

Williams, who also taught at Lehigh and wrote many books, was well-known in the structural engineering field. He designed plants for the production of explosives and was the supervising engineer for the War Department in World War I.