Walter Alexander Groves (March 10, 1898 – September 22, 1983) was an American missionary, minister, educator, and academic administrator who was the 16th president of Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.

While on the ship home, he received a telegram from Centre College president Robert L. McLeod offering him a job as professor of philosophy and religion.

During his ten-year term in charge of the school, Groves managed personnel issues with the faculty and students; he started a campaign to encourage professors to pursue doctoral degrees.

[2] He completed three years of schooling at Lafayette College, in Easton, Pennsylvania, before leaving to enlist in the army during World War I.

He returned to Lafayette in January 1919 and graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in July of that year.

[6] Groves began his professional career when he joined the faculty of his alma mater, Lafayette, as a professor of history and the Bible in 1922; he spent two academic years in this position.

[6] In 1923, the Presbytery of Philadelphia ordained him as a minister, and from 1924 to 1925 he was the secretary of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) Board of Foreign Missions.

Groves gained more responsibilities in addition to his teaching as his 15-year stint at the school progressed: from 1925 to 1931 he was the registrar, and he left that position to become dean.

[2][6] Due to the conflict, they were forced to leave on a ship sailing out of Bombay, which they did on July 24, and they arrived in the United States after 39 days.

He moved back to Danville in December 1946 and began as Centre's sixteenth president on January 1, 1947;[2] as of 2024[update], he is the last minister to lead the school.

Bill at the conclusion of World War II;[9] that and faculty personnel adjustments became a theme of his early tenure as president.

[12] In a 1983 interview, he said that construction of the Memorial Gymnasium was the major fundraising effort of his presidency; he also mentioned the Weisiger Building, a fine arts building which was constructed on the campus of the Kentucky College for Women—at the time, Centre's women's campus—and funded through a willed donation of $150,000 (equivalent to $1,721,000 in 2023) by the benefactor Emma Weisiger.

A lack of desire for consolidation on the part of the women's college students further ensured such plans would not be acted upon,[11] though this merger eventually took place in 1962 under the direction of Groves's successor, Thomas A.

[11] Both church synods held similar views to Groves with respect to desegregation and the college's admissions policies regarding non-White students, one of the biggest issues of the later part of his term.