Robert A. Oden, Jr. is the past president of Carleton College, an independent non-sectarian, coeducational, liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, USA. He began his tenure on July 1, 2002 and retired in June 2010, which marks the end of Carleton's current academic year. Oden was born in Vermillion, South Dakota. He graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University. He then earned a second bachelor's degree and a master's from Cambridge University (where he was a Marshall Scholar) and a master's in theology and a Ph.D. in near Eastern languages and literatures from Harvard. He served on the faculty of Dartmouth College as a professor of religion from 1972 to 1989, where he was the first recipient of Dartmouth's Distinguished Teaching Prize. Oden then served in administrative positions, first as headmaster of The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut from 1989 to 1995, and afterwards as president of Kenyon College from 1995 to 2002, when he accepted the presidency at Carleton College. He also currently holds a faculty appointment in the religion department at Carleton, and regularly teaches a fly-fishing course at the college.