The Graves Lecture Series is named in honor of Dr. Dorset Graves, who was a member of the CSC faculty for 32 years. He retired in 1990, and served as an an adjunct faculty member until 2005. Graves was chair of the CSC Division of Language and Literature for 29 years. Graves died in 2012.

The Graves Lecture Series began in 2006, led by Milton Wolf, director of the library. Wolf said the series will be a “forum for speakers who represent the renaissance of ideas under the sun, the synthesis of analysis, the quest for the holy grail of understanding.” He named the series to honor Graves “as an inspiration to scholarship, civility, and the ideal of wisdom.”

After Wolf‘s death in 2012, Shawn Hartman, outreach services librarian, continued to manage the series. Hartman had worked with Wolf to arrange the earlier Graves presentations, and remained in charge of it until her retirement in 2025. Starting with the Fall 2025 semester, the Graves Lecture Series was managed by the College Relations team, with an aim to continue the academic focus that had been established nearly 20 years earlier.