Dalhouse, Phaup receive honorary degrees at Roanoke College

Two Roanoke College alumni and national and community leaders received honorary degrees during the College's Commencement ceremony this month.

The College recognized Warner Dalhouse '56 of Roanoke, and Dr. Marvin M. Phaup '62 of Washington, D.C., at the May 3 ceremony.

Dalhouse, a retired bank CEO and the 2014 Commencement speaker, was a day student at the College before he transferred to the University of Virginia where he majored in commerce. He also graduated from the Virginia Bankers School of Management and the Stonier Graduate School of Banking at Rutgers University. 

Dalhouse began his banking career as a management trainee at First National Exchange Bank, and he became president and chief administrator in 1977. The bank merged with Dominion Bankshares, and Dalhouse was named executive vice president and chief administrator and later, CEO, president and board chairman. 

He also became CEO and chairman of First Union of Virginia when Dominion merged with First Union National Bank. Years later, he helped found HomeTown Bank in Roanoke.

Dalhouse is a member of the boards of numerous businesses and community organizations. He is chairman of the College's Community Advisory Board and a member of the Roanoke Rising Campaign Steering Committee. Dalhouse received the Roanoke College Alumni Medal in 1988, and he was named a Sesquicentennial Distinguished Alumnus of the College in 1992.

Phaup, who is the retired head of the Financial Studies/Budget Process group for the Congressional Budget Office, is a national leader in government fiscal responsibility. 

He grew up in South Hill, Va., and majored in economics at Roanoke, where he graduated as salutatorian. He also earned a master's degree and a doctorate from UVA. When he was a graduate student, he was a Fulbright fellow at the University of Oslo, Norway.

Phaup was a professor for a time at Roanoke and at the University of Lancaster in England, before he became a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

He moved on to the Congressional Budget Office, where he was deputy assistant director. Some of his early work led to the development of the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990.

Phaup is a widely published author on federal budget issues. Currently, he is a research scholar and lecturer in public policy and public administration at George Washington University.

He received the Roanoke College Alumni Medal in 2009 and in 1992, he was named a Sesquicentennial Distinguished Alumnus.

Roanoke College, a classic liberal arts college in Salem, Virginia, combines firsthand learning with valuable personal connections in a beautiful, undergraduate setting. Roanoke is one of just seven percent of colleges nationwide with a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's oldest and most prestigious honor society. The Princeton Review lists Roanoke as the 18th most beautiful campus in its "Best 376 Colleges" 2012 guidebook. 

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-Published May 12, 2014