William Elgin Wickenden (1882–1947) moved from academia to business and back again. Born in Toledo, Ohio, he graduated from Denison University in 1904. He taught physics and electrical engineering, marrying Marion Lamb in 1908. The following year, they moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he became assistant professor and then associate professor of electrical engineering at MIT. In 1918, commerce called and the couple moved back west to Cleveland, where Wickenden worked as personnel director of the Western Electric Company until his appointment in 1921 as assistant vice president of AT&T. He resigned that position in 1924 to serve as director of a national program to bolster engineering education standards in the United States. In 1929, he was elected president of Case School of Applied Science, his term continuing until the end of the 1946–47 academic year.

Wickenden worked to keep the school solvent throughout the Depression. He advocated the addition of formal graduate programs to the Case curriculum, and during his tenure the first master’s and doctoral degrees were conferred. He served on the boards of the Cleveland Community Fund, Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, Cleveland Welfare Federation and Ohio Labor Board.