 He expanded the faculty with 26 new tenured-track professorships and increased minority enrollment to 24 percent, up from 11 percent when he started.The school built two new buildings, Ford Hall and Kaneko Commons, and purchased several others adjacent to the campus in downtown Salem, and raised $131 million in a fund-raising campaign.At the end of the 2010 academic year Pelton left to take the same position at Emerson College in Massachusetts, replaced at Willamette by Stephen E. Thorsett.