Senate President Gilkey concluded by reflecting on remarks he had made at the fall assembly meeting, noting that the purpose of the university is not bureaucracy but rather scholarship and teaching, saying that without scholarship we have nothing to share with our students and without communicating our knowledge, scholarship is barren.
President Frohnmayer made reference briefly to remarks earlier in the meeting by Professor Wright who lamented the loss of vigor and propriety that once was a hallmark of assembly meetings before student were members and legislative powers shifted to the senate. The president noted that the role of a robust, open forum for debate and collegial action with each other has been assumed by the University Senate. As a testament to the tradition of collegiality, wise and informed debate, and co-ownership of decisions, the president pointed to the quality of leadership demonstrated by the Senate Budget Committee and the senate itself during the past year, even though ultimately the decisions as to the university's direction must remain with the president, and beyond him, with the State Board of Higher Education.
President Frohnmayer especially commended the Senate Budget Committee members, professors Wayne Westling, David Frank, Nathan Tublitz, and Michael Kellman. They worked closely with Provost Moseley to deal with faculty salaries issues, recognizing that in spite of some recapitalization of the institution, money for faculty salaries was woefully insufficient given backsliding for so many years and our relative position with our comparator institutions. Unlike the collective bargaining approach used by other campuses, the financial books were opened to the Senate Budget Committee in good faith to examine every source of income, revenue stream, and incidence of costs in order to determine a collegial way to resolve salary issues. The president remarked that the process was transformational in terms of the relationship between the senate and the administration. The spirit of cooperation in the discussions and the resultant white papers led to informed choices that faculty and administrators could make, when if compared to a similar problem faced by another institution, probably would not have risen to the level of sophistication or ultimately mutual trust and respect that resulted from our process.
Having praised the budget committee for its hard and conscientious work, President Frohnmayer presented each member with a small token of his and the senate's thanks and appreciation for their diligence. The president also saluted the extraordinary leadership of Senate President Peter Gilkey who presided over the senate during a year marked by a number of difficulties. In addition to putting the senate on the World Wide Web with new regularity, President Gilkey operated on a "no surprises" basis. He was especially responsive to a wide number of constituencies and was always willing to teach and to learn. In a job that is seldom easy and often thankless, President Frohnmayer said he believed that President Gilkey's esteem had grown in the eyes of his colleagues because of the work he had done through the course of the year. The president concluded his remarks by presenting President Gilkey with a token of appreciation for the degree to which his efforts have worked to the benefit of the university.
The full text of both president's remarks can be found as links from these minutes on the University Assembly web page at http://www.uoregon.edu/~assembly/frohnm31may00.html
Gwen Steigelman Secretary of the Faculty
Her research career, supported in large part by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Whitehall Foundation, included a number of outstanding discoveries. Her work on the early evolution of land plants showed that higher land plants first appeared in the Middle Ordovician 40 million years earlier than had been previously thought. This discovery, which faced great opposition, is widely accepted today and used in many textbooks. Her masterful book-length monograph on nonmarine paleocology is widely used as a synthesis of what was known in this area up through 1988.
At the time of her death, she was investigating the nature of atmospheric carbon dioxide present since the Cambrian. Her compilation and correlation of a massive amount of botanical and geologic data which will substantively revise previous estimates. This work will be completed by her colleagues. She was also working on a groundbreaking account of the evidence for a widespread Precambrian nonmarine biota, chiefly at the bacterial level.
She taught and mentored many students who found her work and ideas highly original. Her enthusiasm encouraged many to forge ahead in their respective areas. Her death deprives the scientific community of a highly original, innovative worker who undoubtedly would have provided even more significant contributions had time permitted. She will be sorely missed by many colleagues, students, and friends.
Dr. Gray was devoted to animal rights and welfare. Memorial contributions may be made to Greenhill Humane Society. There will be no memorial service at her request.
Dr. Dougherty became the first head of the University of Oregon Department of Dance in 1959, after completing her doctorate in philosophy from New York University. She held more than 25 leadership positions in the National Dance Association, and was active in 25 other professional roles from 1950-82, including Board of Directors of the Congress on Research in Dance, 1965-68; Board of Directors, American College Dance Festival, 1972-74, Vice President, Lane Regional Arts Council, 1978-79; and Touring Selection Panel, Oregon Arts Commission, 1981-82.
She authored several articles on dance education, and choreographed more than forty works before her retirement in 1975. Among the honors she received were the National Dance Association Heritage Award, 1978, and Scholar Award, 1982. She was instrumental in developing the undergraduate major and minor, the graduate degrees in dance, and in securing construction of Gerlinger Annex to include spacious dance studios that convert into a dance studio theater. She was known by her students as "Dr. D", and remained active as a consultant with faculty and former students until shortly before her death.
Prepared by Associate Professor Jenifer Craig, Department of Dance
From the time she began her graduate studies, Marian Card became active in the Society of Architectural Historians and over the years served as an officer in nearly all levels of this professional organization. She served on the Board of Directors, 1964-67, and then was appointed Associate Editor of the Society Newsletter, 1966-72. She was 2nd Vice-President in 1972-74, 1st Vice-President during 1974-76, and President of the Society in 1976-78 (when she also served as General Chairman Bicentennial Programs), continuing on the Board of Directors during 1978-81. To honor her seventeen years of continual service to the Society, she was named a Fellow of the SAH in 1999.
Marian Card was born in Evanston, Illinois, and earned her Baccalaureate and Masters degrees at Oberlin College, in 1946 and 1948 respectively. She taught two years at Upsala College, East Orange, New Jersey 1948-50, and was Art Librarian at the University of Rochester, 1951-53, before embarking on her Ph.D. at Yale University (awarded 1956). At Yale she studied under Carroll L. V. Meeks, writing her dissertation on 17TH century New England meeting houses. While at Yale, she met Russell J. Donnelly, a doctoral student in physics, whom she married in 1956.
Marian Card Donnelly subsequently taught at the University of Chicago and then at the University of Oregon, 1966-81, coming to Eugene when Russell was appointed head of the Physics Department. While her academic specialties were 17th- and 18th-century American architecture and Scandinavian architecture, she became an expert on 17th- and 18th-century northern European organ case design, and on the architectural history of astronomical observatories. Active for many years in support of the Oregon Bach Festival, she was asked after her retirement to assemble a history of the Festival. She published three books, on early American meeting houses, astronomical observatories, and a history of Scandinavian architecture and was a frequent contributor to Old Time New England and Journal if the Society of Architectural Historians. She also took up and completed the history of the SAH which had been begun by Professor Emeritus Alan K. Laing of the University of Illinois; this was published by the Society in 1998.
Throughout her years as a faculty member of the Art History Department, Professor Donnelly was respected for her quiet, steady approach to departmental affairs. Hers was a voice of reason and intelligent compromise. Students at all levels profited from her careful and concerned advice, particularly regarding post-university studies and professional life.
Another of Professor Donnelly's driving professional interests was historic preservation. At the University of Oregon in 1980 she co-founded the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation with Professor Philip Dole of Architecture. Even before the official creation of this program, however, she and the late Professor Marion Dean Ross had already trained many of the people working today in the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office and other regional SHPO offices.
Professor Donnelly's professional affiliations were many, including membership in the Royal Society of Arts, National Trust for Scotland, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, and the Archaeological Institute of America. Among her other interests were choral singing and traveling, especially to areas of Scandinavia which she did often. For example, after her retirement she eagerly set off on a trip to Greenland. She is survived by her son, James, and Russell Donnelly.
Prepared by Professor Leland Roth, with assistance from Professor Esther J Jacobson, Department of Art History
Jim's professional life began in Wisconsin, where he grew up. He received his B.S. in Mathematics and Chem-Physics in 1954 from Wisconsin State University in Superior and his master's and doctoral degrees in 1955 and 1962 from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. During his long UO association Jim also held sabbatical positions at the Matematiske Institut in Aarhus, Denmark and at Cambridge University, as well as visiting teaching appointments at the University of Wisconsin, the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
His research interests were in low-dimensional topology, where his work on the theories of knots and braids contributed to the development of quantum statistics in physics as well as to fundamental mathematical understanding. Jim, or VB as he was often called, was world famous for his ability to construct knots and braids with specific mathematical properties. A fine example of his unique ability came at a 1978 Conference held at Cambridge University. A fundamental existence question in high- dimensional topology had just been reduced to a similar question about 3-dimensional spaces. Sitting in the department lounge with his usual industrial sized cup of coffee, Jim was working with Larry Siebenmann of the University of Paris-Sud at Orsay. They managed to reduce the 3-dimensional question to one involving the existence of a knot with a certain symmetry, and then, bringing out several strings of pop beads from his pockets, Jim produced just such a knot--and then proceeded to describe how to make an infinite family of them. It was an impressive show.
Upon the occasion of his retirement, the Cascade Topology Seminar held a special meeting in Jim's honor. Some seventy-five topologists from around the world came to honor Jim and to hear talks on the themes of his work. Among the speakers were the Fields Medalist Vaughan Jones (UC-Berkeley), W.B.R. Lickorish (Professor and Head of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge), Joan Birman (Columbia), John Hempel (Rice), Dale Rolfsen (UBC), Lou Kauffmann (UIChicago), and Amelia Jones (Vassar).
Jim's command of mathematical examples was only one manifestation of his phenomenal memory. He seemed to know the punch line of every joke ever told and the words to most of the songs ever written, and he enjoyed alluding to jokes or interpolating fragments of lyrics into his conversation. When he talked, one sensed an anecdotal frame of reference much vaster than the subject at hand.
Jim lived on a grand scale, with class. Physically imposing--he played first string center in college--VB augmented his appearance with a splendid waxed handlebar moustache and neatly trimmed beard. He was instantly recognizable. Until ill health undermined it, his physical strength was also exceptional. A dedicated swimmer, he typically logged a mile a day, and while in his sixties completed a rough water swim of over a mile in Hawaiian surf.
Jim and his energetic wife Phyllis enjoyed an unusually wide circle of friends in Eugene and wherever they went. They were the most generous and gracious of hosts, whose parties were in a class of their own. Once at a party for a Turkish job candidate, Jim lined up a belly dancer. At other times he arranged for steelhead from Indians, whiskey without revenue stamps--actually, that one didn't quite work out-- original cartoons and other unusual treasures from his many personal contacts. Friends will never forget the hospitality at the VBs' cabin on the Metolius, and generations of math department kids will remember him as the jovial man who brought the grill and cooked those outstanding burgers at the annual picnics.
Jim's death of heart failure, while sudden, was not entirely unforeseen. He had had major bypass surgery a few years ago and had already lived longer than even he might have predicted, given his medical history. In recent years Jim sometimes expressed the hope that his mind, his body and his money would all go at once. As it turned out, his heart won.
Presented by Professor Emeritus Charles R. B. Wright, Department of Mathematics