Lawrence University News

President Jill Beck Opens Lawrence University’s 155th Academic Year with Matriculation Convocation Focusing on Value of Personalized Instruction

Jill Beck makes her official public debut as Lawrence University’s 15th president Thursday, Sept. 23, opening the college’s 155th academic year with her first matriculation address.

Beck, who was named the successor of long-time Lawrence president Richard Warch in January and assumed the president’s duties in July, will deliver the address “The Value of Individualized Instruction in
Liberal Education” at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. The event is free and open to the public.

Beck will discuss the importance of highly individualized, one-on-one personal interaction between students and teachers and why that kind of close collaboration is so essential to effective learning.

Prior to her appointment as president of Lawrence, Beck spent eight years as dean of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California-Irvine. During her tenure as dean, she founded ArtsBridge America, a national model for the advancement of educational arts partnerships between universities and K-12 communities, and established the da Vinci Research Center for Learning Through the Arts, an interdisciplinary center for research focused on learning across disciplines.

A native of Worcester, Mass., Beck earned a bachelor of arts degree from Clark University in 1970 and her Ph.D. from City University of New York.

In addition to opening the new academic year, Beck’s matriculation address also launches Lawrence’s five-part convocation series for the 2004-05 academic year. Other scheduled speakers in the convocation series include:

Oct. 7 — Columnist, author and political commentator Arianna Huffington

Feb. 8 — Georgia Congressman and noted civil rights activist John Lewis

March 8 — Human rights activist and Partners in Health medical director Joia Mukherjee

May 26 — Columbia University President Lee Bollinger

LU Psychologist Receives Second National Honor for Scientific Research

For the second time this year, Lawrence University psychologist Peter Glick has been recognized with Fellow status by a national psychological organization.

The American Psychological Association, the world’s largest scientific and professional organization with nearly 150,000 members, has named Glick a Fellow for “outstanding contributions in the field of psychology.” Glick joins a select body of psychologists to obtain APA Fellow status. Only three percent of the Washington, D.C.-based association’s current membership have been recognized as Fellows.

Glick’s APA honor comes on the heels of his election in June as a Fellow in the American Psychological Society (APS). He is the first psychologist in Lawrence history to hold Fellow status in both national organizations.

In announcing Glick’s selection as a Fellow, APA membership committee chair Janet Matthews said Glick’s “diligent work and commitment” have enhanced the field of psychology and “the public is better served.”

“It is especially gratifying to receive recognition for my scientific contributions from the largest and most venerable national organization in psychology,” Glick said of his latest honor. “Such recognition more typically goes to researchers at larger universities, where research productivity is emphasized over teaching. I’m particularly proud of having achieved some degree of prominence in psychology while maintaining my commitments as a teacher at a small, undergraduate liberal arts college.”

A social psychologist who joined the Lawrence faculty in 1985, Glick’s research interests focus on both the subtle and the overt ways in which prejudices and stereotypes foster social inequality. In research he co-authored, Glick introduced the concept of “ambivalent sexism,” asserting that not just hostile, but subjectively benevolent views of women as pure, but fragile, reinforce gender inequality. Such “benevolent sexism,” Glick argues, rewards women for conforming to conventional gender roles and results in hostile attitudes toward women who fail to do so.

In collaboration with research associate Susan Fiske of Princeton University, Glick developed the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, which has since been administered to more than 30,000 people in 30 countries. The research earned them the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues in 1995.

Glick serves on the editorial board of four professional journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Psychology of Women Quarterly and regularly delivers lectures at conferences and universities across the country as well as abroad.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology at Oberlin College and his Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Minnesota.

U.S. News & World Report Cites Lawrence University in Three Categories in Annual “Best College’s Guide”

Lawrence University’s outstanding overall educational experience, its distinctive Freshman Studies program and its diverse international student body are all cited by U.S. News & World Report in the magazine’s most recent annual college rankings.

In U.S. News’ 18th annual “America’s Best Colleges” report released Friday (8/20/04), Lawrence was included among the top quarter of the nation’s 217 leading national liberal arts colleges for the sixth consecutive year, earning a 53rd ranking in the “Best Liberal Arts Colleges” category.

Additionally, U.S. News recognized Lawrence in two other categories. For the third year in a row, Lawrence was included among U.S. News’ list of “first-year experiences” based on the strength of Freshman Studies, the college’s signature curricular program. The first-year experiences list is one of eight special categories the magazine uses to highlight what it describes as “outstanding examples of academic programs that are believed to lead to student success.”

The eight special categories are not distinguished by institutional size or type, but include those cited most frequently in a survey of college presidents, chief academic officers and deans of students. Institutions are not numerically ranked in the special categories, but listed alphabetically. Lawrence joined Duke, Princeton, and Stanford universities, among others, who were recognized for first-year programs.

Using enrollment figures from the past academic year, the magazine also ranked Lawrence seventh among all liberal arts colleges in percentage of international students enrolled with 11% of the student body comprised of international students. Lawrence students came from 49 countries, Hong Kong and the Palestinian Authority, in addition to 48 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Williams College of Massachusetts was named the top national liberal arts college for the second consecutive year, while Amherst College, last year’s second-ranked institution, and Swarthmore College, which the magazine ranked third a year ago, tied for second in this year’s rankings.

In compiling its annual “America’s Best Colleges” guide, U.S. News and World Report uses data from 15 separate indicators of academic excellence such as selectivity, graduation rates, student retention, faculty resources and alumni satisfaction. Each factor is assigned a “weight” that reflects the magazine editor’s judgment as to how much that measure matters. Each school’s composite weighted score is then compared to peer institutions to determine final rankings.

For the rankings, U.S. News evaluates nearly 1,400 of the nation’s public and private four-year schools, dividing them into several distinct categories. In addition to the best liberal arts college category, other rankings are based on universities that grant master and doctorate degrees and colleges that are considered “regional” institutions, such as St. Norbert College or UW-Oshkosh. rather than “national” ones, like Lawrence.

Lawrence University Scholar to Edit Major Volume of the Political Writings of Jonathan Swift

Bertrand A. Goldgar, the John N. Bergstrom Professor of Humanities and Professor of English at Lawrence University, has been named by the Cambridge University Press as a contributing editor to a landmark new edition of the works of Jonathan Swift.

The United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Board has awarded a grant of £553,661 over five years (approximately $1.02 million) to support the compilation of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift, which will be published in 15 volumes between 2006 and 2011. The multi-volume edition will be the first scholarly edition of Swift’s collected works in 40 years and, according to the Cambridge University Press, will be the first ever to provide full textual and explanatory information for Swift’s texts.

Funding from the grant will support the creation of an electronic archive of all the authoritative texts of Swift’s prose and assist the general editors, Claude Rawson (Yale University), Ian Higgins (Australian National University, Canberra), and David Womersley (University of Oxford), in the preparation of the texts for the printed edition.

The Anglo-Irish author Swift, born in Dublin in 1667, is widely acknowledged as the foremost satirist in the English language. Best known, perhaps, for his novel “Gulliver’s Travels” (1726), which was intended as a satirical indictment of human nature, Swift wrote extensively, with an array of books, political pamphlets, prose, letters and poetry to his credit.

Goldgar’s contribution to the Cambridge edition, “Swift’s English Political Writing, 1711-1714,” covers Swift’s literary engagement in the politics of early 18th-century London. Although he formerly considered himself a Whig in terms of political philosophy, Swift joined the Tories in 1710 and edited the Tory Examiner for a year. A staunch defender of the Tory party and its leadership, Swift turned his biting satire against the Whigs and their policies, producing such influential political pamphlets as “The Conduct of the Allies” (1711), “Remarks on the Barrier Treaty” (1712) and “The Public Spirit of the Whigs” (1714).

In “The Conduct of the Allies,” Swift claimed that Whig self-interest was instrumental in needlessly prolonging the War of the Spanish Succession, a charge that is said to have led to the dismissal of the commander of the anti-French alliance, British general John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough.

A member of the Lawrence University faculty since 1957, Goldgar is an internationally recognized expert on 18th-century political satire and one of the world’s leading scholars on the life and work of “Tom Jones” creator Henry Fielding.

He is the author or editor of seven books, including “The Curse of Party: Swift’s Relations with Addison and Steele” (University of Nebraska Press, 1961); “The Literary Criticism of Alexander Pope” (University of Nebraska Press, 1965); “Walpole and the Wits: The Relation of Politics to Literature, 1722-1742” (University of Nebraska Press, 1976); “Henry Fielding, The Covent-Garden Journal and A Plan of the Universal Register-Office” (Wesleyan University Press, 1988); “Miscellanies by Henry Fielding, Esq., Volume 2” (Wesleyan University Press, 1993); “Miscellanies by Henry Fielding, Esq., Volume 3: Jonathan Wild” (Wesleyan University Press, 1997); and, most recently, “The Grub Street Journal, 1730-1733” (Pickering & Chatto, 2002), a four-volume edition with introduction and annotation. He also wrote the Afterword for “Plagiarism in Early Modern England” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Lawrence University Political Scientist Cited With National Dissertation Award

A Lawrence University government professor’s research on representation of African-American interests in Congress has been honored with a national award by the American Political Science Association.

Assistant professor of government Christian Grose has been named the recipient of the APSA’s 2004 Carl Albert Dissertation Award for the nation’s best doctoral dissertation in the area of legislative studies.

Established in 1999, the award recognizes outstanding work on national or subnational topics focusing on Congress, parliaments, state legislatures or other representative bodies. Grose is the first faculty
member at a liberal arts college to receive the award. Three of the four previous winners teach at Yale, Harvard and Duke universities.

Grose will receive his award, which includes a $400 cash prize, Labor Day weekend at the annual American Political Science Association meeting in Chicago.

“The award is quite competitive,” said Bruce Oppenheimer, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, who served as chair of the APSA committee that reviewed the nominations and selected the winner for the Albert award. “Because the degree-granting department must first nominate a dissertation before it can be considered, only the very best dissertations are put forth for consideration.

“What separated Christian’s dissertation from the other excellent ones that were nominated was the substantive importance of his findings about the representation of African-American interests in Congress, his integration of rigorous statistical analysis with extensive interviews and field research findings and the overall originality of the work.”

Completed early last year through the University of Rochester, Grose’s dissertation, “Beyond the Vote: A Theory of Black Representation in Congress,” examines the effect of electoral structures and the election of black legislators on the representation of black constituents in Congress. Rejecting more narrow measures of representation presented by previous scholars, Grose focused his analysis on three different modes of representation: roll-call voting, “pork” project allocation and constituency service.

Grose found that electing black representatives in Congress, even if the result in the aggregate is a Republican legislature, is the best strategy for achieving “greater” representation for black Americans when measured as activities beyond roll-call voting. To increase the substantive representation of black interests as measured only by roll-call voting, however, the best strategy is to elect Democratic
legislators of any racial ethnicity.

“I’m certainly honored to have my research recognized by my peers,” said Grose. “The news that I had been selected for the Albert award was as thrilling as it was surprising.”

As a political scientist, Grose’s interests focus on congressional representation, racial politics, elections, voting behavior and public opinion. He joined the Lawrence government department in 2002. In addition to his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester, Grose earned his bachelor’s degree in political science and history from Duke University.

Lawrence University Psychologist Recognized for Contributions to Science Research

Peter Glick, professor of psychology at Lawrence University, has been elected a Fellow in the American Psychological Society for his contributions to the advancement of psychological science. He is the first psychologist at Lawrence ever accorded Fellow status by the APS.

Glick was one of only 19 psychologists nationally awarded fellowship status in the first of two rounds of elections this year. Fellow status recognizes APS members who have made “sustained, outstanding
contributions” to the science of psychology in the areas of research, teaching and/or application.

Founded in 1988, the APS is dedicated to the advancement of scientific psychology and its representation at the national level. It seeks to promote, protect and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in research, application, teaching and the improvement of human welfare. Of the organization’s current 14,260 members, only 1,703 hold Fellow status.

In announcing Glick’s selection, the APS cited him for “enhancing the reputation” of the organization and helping the APS establish itself “as the major voice for scientific psychology.”

“It’s very gratifying to have the national organization for scientific psychology recognize my research,” said Glick. “It’s nice to know that such contributions are valued and appreciated.”

A social psychologist, Glick’s research interests focus on both the subtle and the overt ways in which prejudices and stereotypes foster social inequality. In research he co-authored, Glick introduced the
concept of “ambivalent sexism,” asserting that not just hostile, but subjectively benevolent views of women as pure, but fragile, reinforce gender inequality. Such “benevolent sexism,” Glick argues, rewards women for conforming to conventional gender roles and results in hostile attitudes toward women who fail to do so.

Glick and his research associate, Susan Fiske of Princeton University, developed the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, which has since been administered to more than 30,000 people in 30 countries. The research earned them the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues in 1995.

“Peter’s election as APS Fellow puts him deservedly among a distinguished group of psychological scientists whose research greatly contributes to the growth of our knowledge,” said Fiske, former APS president from 2002-03. “His work has garnered an impressive array of adjectives from others in the field, including ‘innovative,’ ‘truly ground-breaking,’ ‘bold and clever’ and been hailed by as ‘important scholarly work’ and ‘sophisticated, both in its theoretical approach and its methods.'”

“Peter is one of those very rare scholars,” Fiske added, “whose insights can shape the direction of the field for decades.”

Glick serves on the editorial board of four professional journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Psychology of Women Quarterly and regularly delivers lectures at major conferences and universities across the country as well as abroad. A member of the Lawrence faculty since 1985, Glick earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology at Oberlin College and his Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Minnesota.

One Last Time: President Warch Delivers His Final Reunion Convocation

The following is a transcript of Lawrence President (1979-2004) Richard Warch’s final Reunion Convocation remarks, delivered in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel June 19, 2004.

I trust you will understand that I have anticipated this moment with mixed emotions for some time, and most especially in the last several weeks. In my recent letters to alumni, I’ve quipped that after Commencement, the final farewell event last Thursday, and Reunion Weekend, you could put a fork in me: I’ll be done.

That comment tripped rather easily off the word processor, but what began as an attempt to be lighthearted has taken on a greater and more poignant reality as the days have gone by. And so here we are — or at least here I am — for one last time. I’m pleased that this one last time is with Lawrence alumni and takes place in Memorial Chapel, one of the architectural icons of the campus. I’d like to take a moment to recognize with thanks the exceptional generosity of Dorothy Hoehn, who has provided Lawrence with the wherewithal to renovate the Chapel over the past decade and to thereby both retain its character and enhance its utility. We’re grateful.

President Warch, Reunion Convocation 2004

Though I’ll try to come up with a few clever quips before I’m done, I take seriously the fact that this is my final opportunity to speak with alumni as Lawrence president. Come to think of it, it’s my final opportunity to speak to anybody as Lawrence president, so settle down and buckle up.

Many of you have heard one or another version of my Valedictory remarks, which I have delivered 15 times over the past several months, coast to coast, north to south. For those of you who have not heard the speech, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version: Lawrence needs and deserves alumni endorsement and advocacy of its purposes and alumni support to further those purposes; liberal learning as professed at Lawrence in both college and conservatory is a powerful and life-changing, if often undervalued and misunderstood, brand of higher education, and it will thrive in the future to the extent that those who have experienced its virtues promote its persistence into that future. That’s the short version.

Here’s the shorter one: Give to The Lawrence Fund! Naturally, I have sought to be slightly more circumspect in conveying that message over the years and in recent months, but with 11 days to go, I say the hell with circumspection: Give to The Lawrence Fund! Or, as I put in a letter of acknowledgment to an alumnus I know pretty well: “Thanks for the gift. We can use the cash.”

Seriously, nothing would give me greater pleasure than seeing the alumni donor participation rate return — after a two-year absence — to the 50th percentile. Again borrowing from the Valedictory, I’ve been sharing with alumni a profound proposition, prompted by the fact that about 67 percent of you have made gifts to The Lawrence Fund at least once in the past three years. And here’s the insightful and innovative idea: if alumni made annual gifts annually — that is a difficult concept, so let me repeat it: if alumni made annual gifts annually — our donor participation rate would be truly enviable. We stood at 47 percent as of yesterday, so I assume a number of you in the Chapel this morning have the power to put us over the top or know those who can; I urge you to do your part and to spread the word.

But enough on that topic. I’ve only got 11 days to go, so won’t have many more opportunities to make the predictable presidential pitch and didn’t want to let this one pass by.

Presidential proclivities

One of the consequences of being a college president for 25 years is that one tends to exhaust the repertoire of quips and quotations; tends to repeat oneself; becomes, at best, known for certain turns of phrase and, at worst, for certain rhetorical devices, alliteration being the petard on which I’m most often hung. Over the past several months, various folks have had the proverbial picnic providing parodies of my proclivities (did I mention alliteration?).

First, there was the faux issue of the student newspaper, entitled The LaWarchian, written by a gang of 19 merry pranksters from classes of the early 1980s. They called it “affectionate abuse,” and while I am pleased to acknowledge the adjective, I can assure you that the noun is accurate. Abuse it was.

Then, Greg Volk had a run at me at the Founders Club dinner on May 6, in a speech entitled “Never Can Say Good-bye” or, as he put it, “Never Can Stop Saying Good-bye,” which he likes to consider a terrific testimonial tribute (did I mention alliteration?) but which contained more than a few friendly jabs.

Next, Brian Rosenberg, president of Macalester and former dean of the faculty at Lawrence, took his turn at giving me the business at the farewell event in Minneapolis last month, in which he said that it was a “great and good thing to speak of the values and virtues, not to mention the principles and purposes” that I’ve espoused over the years (did I mention alliteration?) and complimented me on being the “first college president to have his word processor retired by the editors of the Metaphors R Us website.”

Presidential prerogatives

And those are just from alumni and colleagues. The faculty — ah, the faculty — have had their own opportunities, which they have seized with reckless relish and devilish delectation, most often at the Senior Class Dinner. No faculty speaker, it seems, can concoct a set of remarks for that occasion that does not use me as a prop; a few years ago I was a physical prop and just a month ago a Photo-Shopped prop on a take-off of The Matrix called The LUtrix.

On the day the Board of Trustees selected me as the 14th president, Ed West [’32] took me aside and told me that I would be responsible for everything. Art Remley overheard the remark and told me that, as president, his grandfather, “Doc Sammy” Plantz, often did the shopping for the dining rooms.

That sense of presidential oversight and involvement with everything has certainly obtained for me over the past quarter century, but at least I haven’t received a letter from a faculty member resembling the one Professor of English W. E. McPheeters sent to Sammy Plantz in 1921 (he’d written on the same topic a year earlier, evidently to no good effect):

Dear Doctor Plantz:
The ivy has grown over my office window to such an extent that when the leaves are out almost all the light is barred from the room. I would be very much obliged if you would have this cut away. It ought to be done now, I presume, before the leaves come out. A great deal of filth from the vines as well as from the birds that nest in them has accumulated just outside the window of my office. Will you please have the man who cuts the vines clear this away also, as it is not only unsightly but insanitary.

But, if the faculty have not harassed me about overgrown ivy and bird droppings, the students have had their moments, often about food service or other matters that strike them as a perverse example of the Lawrence Difference. Their complaints are familiar, as I had the same ones when I was in college. Our culinary question was this: “How can we have leftover lamb when we never had lamb?”

The students have had at me on other fronts as well. Over the years I have found myself interviewed in the Coffeehouse by an undergraduate who seemed to be auditioning to replace David Letterman, have been the subject of ”The Warch Hour” on Trivia Weekend, have gotten roped in to singing “O’er the Fox” for a musical show put on by a student I had taught in Freshman Studies, and have helped students raise money for worthy causes by having whipped cream pies thrown at my face, being placed in a dunk tank, and other moments of a like sort, none of which were intended to honor the dignity of the office, to say nothing of bolstering the self-esteem of the 14th holder of the office. I’ve had my face plastered on t-shirts and on reunion postcards, usually with some clever slogan appended. And I’m not even going to touch the April Fool’s edition of The Lawrentian. My principal claim to fame in that annual effort is that I share center stage with Bert Goldgar in providing grist for the undergraduate humor mill.

Among the indignities I’ve experienced over the years are those that deal with my name. Last spring, a student asked me why I spelled it that way, and I had to confess that my mother had come up with that version by reading Rudyard Kipling’s story about Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. At least she didn’t nickname me Tikki.

Nonetheless, I have received salutations addressed to Ric with a c, sometimes with a c and a k. There are those who have, in a failed effort to feign friendly familiarity (did I mention alliteration?), called me Dick; actually, my sons Stephen and David often called me Dick, but that was when they were upset with one of my parental rulings. My last name has been spelled like the month or like a swampy area, and while one obsequious writer saluted me as The Distinguished Richard Warch — though that letter was postmarked from overseas and written by someone who didn’t know any better — my favorites are letters addressed to me — inexplicably — as Shannon Warch and, at the top of the list, and two times, no less, as Richard Worst.

All of which is to say that, after 25 years, I have come to the conclusion that to be the Lawrence president is to be treated like a piñata by the various constituencies of the institution. And I am pleased to pass these particular and peculiar presidential prerogatives (did I mention alliteration?) on to Jill Beck with my best wishes.

The lady with the Manhattan

Of course, not everyone taking a whack at the piñata does so with the intention to be humorous; not all the abuse is affectionate. I’ve certainly had reason to confirm Abraham Lincoln’s claim that you can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time.

In the course of a quarter century, there is a high probability that you will make decisions or take actions that will irritate somebody, and over time, those somebodies can constitute a considerable crowd. But that comes with the territory, and while I have not become wholly inured to the expressions of such aggravation, I have tried to soldier on. The secret, as Casey Stengel put it, “is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.”

There are, of course, some minor pleasures even here. As when one faculty member, with whom I had, shall we say, a difference of opinion, told me that he would outlast me at Lawrence and get his way eventually. I had the good grace not to remind him of that comment when he retired.

And then, of course, there are the alumni who, disagreeing with this or that policy or action, play the infamous “Not another dime” card. In these cases, the satisfaction comes from discovering, upon investigation of the donor rolls and records, that it turns out that most of them had not given the first dime, therefore mitigating the threat not to contribute another one.

Then there were the alumni who attended an event several years ago in the early stages of the dispute with the fraternities who passed out literature and treated the question-and-answer portion of the evening as a deposition of yours truly. I’m pleased to report that, a few months ago, following the settlement of that dispute, one of those alumni had the good grace and humor to stand at the question-and-answer portion of a farewell tour event to ask me if I would appreciate it if he didn’t ask a question, to which I replied in the affirmative.

I have many memories of alumni gatherings around the country, and memories especially of Reunion Weekends. The first time I took a tour to visit alumni was when I was serving as vice president for academic affairs and then-director of alumni relations Gil Swift [’59] took me to Chippewa Falls, Minneapolis, and Duluth. I had prepared a set of remarks, though when we got to Duluth for a mid-day luncheon gathering, only four women showed up, one of them from the Class of 1929.

We assembled at 11:30, and the member of the Class of 1929 promptly ordered a Manhattan. Hmmm, I thought, this could get interesting. In any case, with only four people there, I decided not to deliver my remarks but indicated I’d be pleased to respond to questions and have a conversation, at which point one of the women said, “I understand that there are coeducational residence halls at Lawrence, and will you please explain that?”

As I paused to contrive a response, the lady with the Manhattan piped up and said, “When I was at Lawrence, George Smith [I forget the name, but let’s say George Smith] got caught climbing through a window at Ormsby Hall [then housing women], and he and 11 sophomore women were kicked out of college.” She took a sip of her drink, and continued: “He went on to play football in Green Bay, and that’s why they’re called the Green Bay Peckers.”

Well, that defused any questions about coeducational residence halls and prompted me to think that Lawrence alumni were likely to be a lively and engaging group. I’ve not been disappointed. I’ve had wonderful visits with alumni since, but nothing to top that first encounter.

My first memory of Reunion Weekend dates from around the same time, when I was still the chief academic officer, and the alumni office assigned various members of the administration to serve as hosts for individual reunion classes. Margot and I were duly assigned and faithfully showed up and sat at a dinner table in Alexander Gymnasium with members of the class. At which point, the members of the class at the table promptly got up and moved elsewhere. It was not an auspicious beginning, though it has gotten better since, perhaps because we serve adult beverages and provide meals for some of the milestone reunion classes.

Over the past 25 years, I’ve welcomed over 20,000 alumni to this festive occasion and had the privilege and pleasure of conveying outstanding service and achievement awards to 158 of you, including the six this morning. I’ve enjoyed each of these celebratory weekends and appreciate the efforts all of you make to be here and to celebrate, appreciation that is shared, I might add, by the tavern owners along College Avenue, whose annual profits depend almost entirely on

Lawrence reunion weekends

I do want you to know that alumni — along with students, faculty, and friends — have also provided counsel to me over the past quarter century, leading me to realize that being a college president is the easiest job in the world: everyone knows how to do it and will cheerfully inform you of the fact.

Still and all, I look back on my Lawrence years and my interactions with alumni with gratitude and pleasure. I have heard your recollections of favorite professors and the ways in which your liberal education has served you long beyond graduation. I have derived reinforcement from you in appreciating the abiding value of Freshman Studies, and the transforming nature of a Lawrence experience.

Herding cats

I have embraced the traditions of the college; have promoted its special brand of liberal learning, in and beyond Freshman Studies; have acknowledged and sought to sustain and extend the contributions of a distinguished array of presidential predecessors; and have relished the opportunities to work with an assemblage of bright, interesting, engaged — if sometimes contentious — cohort of faculty members, the vast majority of whom I had the privilege of hiring and promoting.

Say what you will about the old adage that dealing with faculty is like herding cats, or that faculty are people who think otherwise, or that they are individuals, not to say independent contractors, who are not always amenable to “direction.” Indeed, faculty members sometimes respond to such direction like Bartleby the Scrivener: they “prefer not to.”

But, a feisty faculty is, frankly and for the most part, a first-rate faculty; that’s not, I’ll grant you, a causal relationship, but the traits are often paired. “Docile” is not a word I would apply to them, although on occasion “rebarbative” is (look it up!). But that too comes with the territory.

I know I’ll miss the company of such people and the stimulation they provide. They and those whom many of you remember from your Lawrence years carry the teaching and learning mission of college and conservatory forward with excellence, share the commitment to Lawrence and its purposes that you hold, and are a group I am proud to leave for Jill Beck.

The same may be said of students. To be sure, there are moments when their youthful behaviors whiten the hair, though at least those behaviors have not caused me to lose it (the hair, that is). At times one feels like the basketball coach who lamented “How would you like it if your job depended on a bunch of youngsters in shorts running up and down the court?”

But Lawrentians are a great group, and they achieve many moments of insight and accomplishment in their academic and creative pursuits. Observing the ways in which they grow and flourish in the college years is one of the great rewards of the job. I’ll miss them too.

Two years ago, when I was discussing my intention to retire with Harold Jordan [’72] and Jeff Riester [’70], then respectively chair and vice chair of the Board of Trustees, they told me not to feel dispirited if all that I might wish to see accomplished at and for Lawrence did not come to pass on my watch. That was good advice, though I am obviously pleased that the settlement with the fraternities has been accomplished and that the slate on that score is essentially clean for Jill Beck.

Leaving Lawrence

One often reads about departing college presidents who say that they’ve been in the job long enough, or that they have accomplished all they set out to do, or who leave for presumptively greener pastures. Clearly, whatever numerical figure one places on the notion of “long enough,” I’ve blown by it. And any college president who claims a completed set of accomplishments may have set his or her sights too low or may have served an institution without ambitions. However long one serves, there is always more to be done, challenges to be met, improvements to be made, initiatives to be imagined and undertaken. So while the tenure of a college president occurs in a fixed period, the job of a college president is ongoing. It is Jill Beck’s good fortune to have the chance to assume that ongoing job at Lawrence. And while other pastures may appear greener, the Lawrence pasture has been green enough for me.

Margot and Rik Warch, Reunion Convocation 2004

Leaving Lawrence is, of course, difficult and bittersweet. I will miss the place and its people and especially the good friends I have been privileged to make here. I have been deeply touched by the notes and letters of well wishes extended to me by many of you; by the expressions of affection and support I have received from our alumni and friends on the farewell tour — including the “affectionate abuse” provided by the 19 alumni who produced “The LaWarchian”; by the thoughtfulness of the emeriti faculty in honoring Margot and me at a lunch in April and establishing a book fund at Lawrence in our names; by the spirited farewell and gifts from members of the alumni board, who feted and serenaded me at their spring meeting; by the recognition and the gifts from India, Ghana, and Jamaica from the students in Lawrence International at their International Cabaret; by the magnificent result of the Thanks Rik! Campaign, to which many contributed so generously, that will establish an endowed fund to support Björklunden; by the parting recognition conveyed by Mortar Board with its Honorary Award conveyed at the Honors Banquet last month; by the LUCC recognition, the Hyde Park bench and the Lawrence letter jacket from the all-campus farewell on June 5; by the print of my favorite Winnie-the-Pooh quotation from the residence life staff, commemorating my proclivity for reading bedtime stories to students; by having the Lawrence rowing club’s new shell named for me and Margot and christening it a week and a half ago; by the plot of moon acreage given me by the women in Sampson House; and by the bench and a Winifred Boynton cartoon given to me by members of my administrative staff three days ago.

I am also pleased that David Heller [’80], a member of the first class I taught at Lawrence when he was a freshman, has returned to play the organ this morning. If you want to hear the Brombaugh Opus 33 in full voice and some smash-mouth music, I urge you to stay for the postlude.

I assure you that leaving Lawrence is a physical act, not an intellectual or emotional one. Lawrence will be much on my mind in the months and years ahead, and it will be the focus of and the inspiration for the writing I plan to do in that time. And as an added bonus, I know that Björklunden is only 20 miles away from our retirement home in Ellison Bay.

The years ahead

Finally, then, to John Reeve [’34], who chaired the Board of Trustees in 1979, and to Jeff Riester, Class of 1970, who chairs it today, and to others who served with them on the presidential search committee in 1979, I extend thanks for the opportunity.

And to all of you, let me leave you with this last word: There is a Celtic saying that goes “we are warmed by fires we did not build, we drink from wells we did not dig.” And so might it be said that we are educated at colleges we did not create. But we can stoke the fires, we can maintain the wells, and we can support the colleges, in the present instance this college. None of us created Lawrence, but all of us have benefited from it, and thus I hope will work to sustain and enhance the college for the benefit of those yet to come. For you are not only Lawrence’s alumni, but also its stewards.

To all of you who claim Lawrence as alma mater and who share my great regard for its values and for the important work that it does, thanks for your devotion to this special place and the support you’ve extended to the college and to me for the past quarter century.

I urge you to do the same for Lawrence and for Jill Beck in the years ahead.

Eight Alumni Recognized for Career Achievement, Service at Lawrence University Reunion Celebration

For nearly 30 years, Jean Schumaker has been working on mechanisms for improving the learning effectiveness of students with learning disabilities as well as the instructional effectiveness of teachers.

The co-founder of the Center for Research on Learning at the University of Kansas, Schumaker is one of eight Lawrence University graduates who will be recognized Saturday June 19 for their accomplishments and service as part of the college’s annual Reunion Weekend celebration.

Lawrence will welcome nearly 1,000 alumni and guests from 42 states and four countries, including Australia and South Africa, back to campus for a variety of weekend-long activities. Three alumni will be recognized with distinguished achievement awards and five will he honored with service awards during the annual reunion convocation Saturday at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel.

Schumaker and David Hawkanson, executive director of Chicago’sSteppenwolf Theatre, will receive the Lucia R. Briggs Distinguished Achievement Award. Named in honor of the second president of Milwaukee-Downer College, the Briggs award recognizes alumni of more than 15 years for outstanding contributions to and achievements in a career field.

A 1968 graduate with a major in psychology, Schumaker co-founded UK’s Center for Research Learning in 1978 and serves at its associate director today. Also an associate professor in the UK’s department of special education, Schumaker is regarded as one of the nation’s leading researchers in the field of learning disabilities.

She has been principal investigator of research grants and contracts totaling nearly $60 million and has written more than 80 articles for professional journals, 29 book chapters and 45 books and instructional manuals for classroom teachers, including “Teaching Every Adolescent Every Day: Learning in Diverse High School Classrooms,” which she co-edited.

Schumaker also founded the International Training Network (ITN), whose 1,200 trainers teach educators throughout the world to use the scientifically based instructional practices developed by the CRL. In 1983, she established Edge Enterprises, an educational research and publishing organization that provides specialized instructional materials to educators.

She earned her Ph.D. in development and child psychology from the University of Kansas and was trained as a somatic experiencing practitioner in trauma therapy by the Ergos Institute. She is a member of the University of Kansas Women’s Hall of Fame and have been a recipient of the Outstanding Achievement Award of the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division for Learning Disabilities.

Hawkanson, who earned a bachelor’s degree in theatre and drama in 1969, has enjoyed a distinguished 30-year professional career managing regional theatres across the country. Prior to being named executive director of Steppenwolf Theatre in 2003, Hawkanson spent six years (1996-2001) as managing director of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, where he first began his career as a house manager in 1970. He also has held managerial positions with the American Conservatory Theater, served as managing director of the Arizona Theater Company and spent eight years as managing director at the Hartford Stage Company, which received a special Tony Award in 1989 for outstanding achievement in regional theatre while under his management.

Before joining Steppenwolf, Hawkanson maintained a management consulting practice with clients in Arizona, Connecticut, Oregon, Minnesota, New Mexico and Illinois. He has served as an artistic advisor to the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, been a program committee member for
the National Arts Stabilization Fund and worked as a panelist and advisor to both the Ford Foundation’s Working Capital Fund and the Minneapolis Foundation’s Working Capital Reserve Fund.

In addition, he is a former senior staff member at the National Endowment for the Arts and a former chairman and panelist for the theatre program of the NEA. He has served as an officer and board
member of the Alliance for Arts Advocates, Theater Trustees of America, the Theatre Communications Group, Minnesota Citizens for the Arts, New York Stage and Film and the American Arts Alliance.

Mary Louise Knutson, a 1988 graduate and piano performance major, will receive the Nathan M. Pusey Young Alumni Distinguished Achievement Award, which recognizes Lawrence alumni of 15 years or less for significant contributions to and achievements in a career field. The award honors the 10th and youngest president of Lawrence and an exemplary figure in higher education in the 20th century.

A jazz pianist and composer based in Minneapolis, Knutson has been called “one of the most exciting and innovative artists to happen to jazz piano in quite some time.” Her debut jazz trio CD, “Call Me When You Get There,” spent eight consecutive weeks in the top 50 in the United States and Canada following its 2001 release and earned Knutson “Top New Jazz Instrumentalist of the Year” honors. The CD’s title track composition was selected as the music for the art documentary “Wellington Lee: 60 Years of Artistic Photography” and soon will be heard at major art museums across the country. She has performed with jazz greats Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby McFerrin, Dianne Reeves, Slide Hampton, Richie Cole and Greg Abate, among others as well as Smoky Robinson, the Osmonds and Engelbert Humperdinck. She has toured internationally as lead keyboardist for Synergy (formerly known as Rupert’s Orchestra) and regularly plays clubs, festivals and concert halls around the country with her jazz trio or as a soloist.

Knutson has been honored numerous times as a composer, including two awards from Billboard magazine for her compositions “How Will I Know? and “Meridian.” In addition, her composition “Merle the Pearl” streams on the Internet as the theme music for “Jazz Release,” an interview program on JazzSteps.com.

A former instructor in jazz piano and improvisation at Carleton College, Knutson is a member of the International Association for Jazz Education and teaches a variety of masterclasses, including “Jazz Voicings and Scales: Freedom from the Written Page” for beginning jazz students and “What’s Up with Jazz?” for non-musicians.

William Mittlefehldt, a 1968 graduate, will receive the George B. Walter Service to Society Award. Named in honor of Walter, a 1936 graduate and former faculty member and dean of men at Lawrence, who believed strongly that every individual can and should make a positive difference in the world, the award recognizes alumni who best exemplify the ideals of a liberal education through socially useful service in their community, the nation or the world. Since 1974, Mittlefehldt has taught social studies, futuristics, environmental issues and — by example — community service at Anoka High School in Minnesota with imagination, energy and personal commitment.

Widely recognized as the author of innovative and effective curricula, Mittlefehldt’s economics curriculum “Minnesota, Where Are We Growing?” earned first-prize honors in the 1987 National Economics Award Program. In 1992, he was honored by the Amway Corporation and Time magazine as one of nine “Earth Teachers of the Year” for his curricular unit “Energy: How Weather Is Created,” which also earned Anoka High School a $10,000 grant from Amway. In 2002, Mittlefehldt was named a regional winner of the NASDAQ Distinguished Teaching Award and most recently, he was a first-place winner at the secondary-school level of the 3M-sponsored Innovative Economic Education Awards.

Mittlefehldt has led student teams to testify before the United Nations, the U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee and the Minnesota legislature and has directed numerous other student ventures into the realm of education through activism. He serves on the national advisory board for Rescue Mission Planet Earth, is an advisor to Vermont’s Center for a Sustainable Future and serves as a curriculum designer for the Water on the Web team at the University of Minnesota.

Kelly Carroll Rhodes, a 1989 graduate, and Gina Perri Jaeckl, a 1994 graduate, will each receive the Marshall B. Hulbert Young Alumni Service Award. Presented to alumni of 15 years or less who has provided significant service to the Lawrence, the award honors Marshall Hulbert, a 1926 graduate known as “Mr. Lawrence,” who contributed to thousands of Lawrentian lives and served the college and the conservatory in many significant capacities for 54 years.

Rhodes, Edina, Minn., has served as class secretary for her class for 11 of the 15 years since she graduated. She has served on all three reunion steering committees and has volunteered as a career contact and an admissions volunteer. In 2003, she completed a four-year term on the Lawrence University Alumni Association Board of Directors, during which she was a member of the student relations committee and later assumed leadership of the careers committee, which included serving on the board’s executive committee.

Jaeckl, Chicago, has been active with her 5th- and 10th-year reunion steering committees and also served on the gift committee for her 10th Reunion this year. She has worked as a volunteer for the admissions program and served for three years as a career contact. In addition, she has helped organize and host alumni events in the Chicago region and been active the Viking Gift Committee, soliciting support from young alumni for The Lawrence Fund.

Husband and wife Walter and Barbara Ives Isaac, Lakewood, Colo., will share the Gertrude B. Jupp outstanding Service Award. Named in honor of Gertrude Jupp, a 1918 graduate of Milwaukee-Downer College who was named M-D Alumna of the Year in 1964 for her long volunteer service to the college.

Both members of the class of 1964, the Isaacs have served as key alumni leaders, working on every reunion committee since they graduated. Barbara Isaac has served as a volunteer admissions worker in the Denver area for more than 20 years, coordinating countless admissions events and persuading many Denver high school students to enroll at Lawrence.

Walter Isaac served on the Lawrence University Alumni Association Board of Directors for six years, where he chaired the communications committee for two years and served on the executive committee for four. He served as president of the LUAA from 2001-03.

Lawrence University Psychologist Awarded Norwegian Marshall Fund Grant to Study Cross-Language Speech Perception

Lawrence University psychologist Terry Rew-Gottfried has been awarded a 10,000 kroner grant (approximately $1,500 U.S.) by the Norwegian Marshall Fund Committee to conduct research on cross-language differences in speech perception. The grant will help support his sabbatical research during April and May of 2005 in Trondheim, Norway.

Rew-Gottfried will pursue a two-part research project while in Norway. The first phase is an extension of earlier work he conducted in Denmark comparing Danish and English spectral and durational information in vowels. In collaboration with a Norwegian colleague, he will investigate differences in how Norwegian listeners, in comparison to Danes, perceive the vowel contrasts of their native and their second language.

The second part of his research will focus on determining whether the use of linguistic tones in Norwegian provides native speakers of that language with an advantage in learning the lexical tones of Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin Chinese uses phonemic tones that are primarily cued acoustically by contours of pitch. For example, the syllable ma means “mother,” “hemp,” “horse,” or “scold,” depending on whether the pitch is high-level, mid-rising, low-dipping or high-falling, respectively. Like Mandarin, Norwegian varies pitch contour in some words to indicate different meanings. While American English listeners have considerable difficulty in differentiating the phonemic tones of Mandarin, native Norwegian listeners may have less difficulty, given their native language’s use of linguistic tone to make phonemic distinctions.

Rew-Gottfried’s research is expected to address more broadly the question in psycholinguistics and second language learning of what factors help or hinder language learners in speaking and understanding a second language. Learners vary considerably, according to Rew-Gottfried, in their ability to achieve native-like competence in producing and perceiving speech sounds. The research has important implications for theories of speech processing across many different languages.

A member of the Lawrence psychology department since 1986, Rew-Gottfried has spent more than 20 years investigating the effect of second-language learning on listeners’ ability to identify and discriminate unfamiliar speech sounds, how acoustic characteristics of different languages differ with the context in which they are spoken as well as the relationship of musical ability and second-language learning.

He spent the fall 2001 academic term as a Fulbright Visiting Lecturer/Research Scholar at the English department of Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmark, teaching the psychology of language and conducting collaborative research on the duration and rate effects on American English vowel identification by native Danish listeners.

Rew-Gottfried has also conducted research on memory, including eyewitness memory and the use of perceptual imagery in improving recall. He earned his Ph.D. in experimental psychology at the University of Minnesota.

Lawrence University Art Historian, Chemist Recognized for Teaching Excellence

Art historian Carol Lawton was cited with an unprecedented third teaching award and chemist Karen Nordell was recognized for her teaching prowess among junior faculty Sunday, June 13 at Lawrence University’s 155th commencement.

Lawton, professor of art history, received Lawrence’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, given annually to a faculty member for outstanding performance in the teaching process, including the quest to ensure students reach their full development as individuals, human beings and future leaders of society.

Nordell, assistant professor of chemistry, was presented the Young Teacher Award in recognition of demonstrated excellence in the classroom and the promise of continued growth.

The recipient of the college’s Young Teacher Award in 1982 and the Freshman Studies Teaching Award in 1998, Lawton is Lawrence’s only faculty member ever recognized with all three teaching honors.

A specialist in ancient Greek sculpture, Lawton joined the Lawrence art department in 1980. She has made numerous research trips to Greece to work with the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, where she is pursuing study on Greek and Roman votive reliefs excavated from the Athenian Agora, the center of civic activity of ancient Athens.

She is the author of the book, “Attic Document Reliefs of the Classical and Hellenistic Periods,” (Oxford University Press, 1995) and has received research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the J. Paul Getty Trust. She serves as curator of Lawrence’s Ottilia Buerger Collection of ancient and Byzantine coins.

In presenting the award, Lawrence President Richard Warch cited Lawton’s faculty colleagues, who describe her teaching as “solid,” “demanding,” “tough-minded” and “characterized by an unremitting emphasis on precision and consistently high standards.”

“Art history majors credit you with igniting their passion for the subject and non majors relish the ways in which your courses broaden their educational horizons,” Warch said. “Your love of stone and how beautiful it can become in the hands of a Greek sculptor led you to carve out a niche for yourself in ancient art history. Your research with Greek and Roman votive reliefs emphasize not only the beauty of the objects themselves, but what the objects tell us about the culture, religion and politics of their period.”

A native of Oakland, Md., Lawton earned her bachelor’s degree in art history from Vassar College and her Ph.D. in art history from Princeton University.

Nordell, who joined the Lawrence chemistry department in 2000, is a specialist in materials chemistry, specifically nanoscale science, which focuses on the manipulation of matter at the smallest level, literally atom-by-atom.

In 2002, with the help of a grant from the Women’s Fund of the Community Foundation of the Fox Valley Region, Nordell co-founded the outreach program PRYSM — Partners Reaching Youth in Science and Math. The program matches women students at Lawrence who are majoring in one of the sciences or mathematics with eighth-grade girls from Appleton’s Roosevelt Middle School. The Lawrence students serve as mentors and role models to their younger counterparts, providing tutoring assistance, conducting experiences and leading occasional field trips of scientific interest.

Warch cited Nordell’s “infectious enthusiasm” and her “genuine interest in her students” in recognizing her.

“They {students} admire and appreciate the limitless energy and passion for teaching you bring to all you do, praise expressed not only by chemistry majors but by the scientifically challenged as well,” Warch said. “Through your work with Partners Reaching Youth in Science and Math, known to us as PRYSM, and Girls Exploring Math and Science,
referred to as GEMS, you, your students and your colleague Eugenie Hunsicker have provided important role models for young girls in their early encounters with these disciplines.”

A graduate of Appleton East High School, Nordell earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Northwestern University and her Ph.D. in chemistry at Iowa State University.