Shannon Boyd-Bailey McCune (April 6, 1913 – January 4, 1993) was an American geographer.
Early life and education
Shannon Boyd-Bailey McCune was born in Sonchon, in what is now North Korea, as the son of Presbyterian educational missionaries George McCune and Helen McAfee. His older brother was George M. McCune. He also had two sisters. After receiving his elementary education in Korea, the younger McCune moved to the United States for college, graduating with a bachelor's degree from the College of Wooster in 1935.[1] He earned a master's degree from Syracuse University. After receiving his Ph.D. in geography from Clark University in 1939, McCune taught at Ohio State University.
He married and had three children.
He was the chairman of the geography department at Colgate University from 1947 to 1955, and the provost of the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 1955 to 1961. In 1960, while acting president of UMass, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws from his alma mater Clark. He left academia and the United States to serve as the first civilian civil administrator of the Ryukyu Islands from 1962-64. He served as the president of the University of Vermont from 1964-1966,[2] but resigned due to incompatibility with Board of Trustees and took a research trip to Asia. From 1969 to his retirement in 1979, he was a professor of geography at the University of Florida in Gainesville.[3][4]
