LANCASTER, Pa. - Four retiring members of the Franklin & Marshall College faculty were honored at Saturday's (5/12) commencement ceremony. They are Dorothy Louise, theater, dance and film; James Spencer, chemistry; Glenn Stevens, business, organizations and society; and Robert Wiebe, earth and environment. All four received the Socrates award, which is given to retiring members of the faculty. President John Fry presented the awards. Dorothy Louise, Professor of Theater, came to Franklin & Marshall in 1988 after serving as director of board activities and external relations for the New Jersey Department of Higher Education. She holds an A.B. in English from Rosary College, a master's in the creative writing program at Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in speech and drama, also from Stanford. Louise was an important voice in the redefinition and consequent renaming of the Drama Department to the Department of Theater, Dance & Film and helped direct the steps of this new entity as it passed through its formative years and blossomed into a full-fledged and highly visible presence at Franklin & Marshall. In the course of her tenure at Franklin & Marshall, Louise created and taught such wonderful courses as "Mask and Face, "Hecuba to Heidi," and "Comedy as Social Critique." She also pushed to internationalize our theater curriculum, by creating opportunities for F&M students to study in Japan and England. Louise's plays reflect her range of humor and passion, both those she directed (including La Ronde, Tales of the Lost Formicans, and Servant of Two Masters), and those she wrote (such as Attic Electra, Loveknot, and Love's Labours Wonne). Her citation reads, "Her productions unleashed our students' wild sides, challenging them theatrically, and allowing them to premiere new works." Louise received many honors throughout her career, including grants from the NEA, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Tyrone Guthrie Center, and Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers. Her works received professional productions in New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Ireland. Her citation reads, " Her example as a teacher and a theater professional inspired several students to dare to model their career aspirations on Professor Louise’s example."
James Spencer, William G. and Elizabeth R. Simeral Professor of Chemistry, joined the Department of Chemistry at Franklin & Marshall in 1980, following a successful and productive 13-year stint at nearby Lebanon Valley College. He earned a B.S. in chemistry from Marshall University and his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Iowa State University. Spencer made an immediate impact, quickly gaining tenure and promotion, and becoming chair of the department. In that capacity, he initiated a review of the chemistry curriculum, resulting in several important revisions. In addition, he served on many of the major committees on campus, including the Curriculum Committee and the Professional Standards Committee. Spencer's career has been one of passionate commitment to teaching, learning, and research. He has been awarded the highest honors that the college can bestow on a faculty member in each of these areas, receiving the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1988 and the Dewey Award for Outstanding Scholarship in 1994. His scholarly efforts have led to over 100 publications, the vast majority of those with undergraduate co-authors. Spencer has received the Chemical Manufacturers Association National Award for Teaching, and the E. Emmet Reid Award for excellence in the teaching of chemistry in the Mid-Atlantic Region. He is one of only two people to have been awarded both the American Chemical Society's Pimentel Award in Chemical Education and also the ACS Award for Research at an Undergraduate Institution; he is the only one to receive both of these honors with a career solely at a four-year institution. Spencer also played a key role in the establishment of the Hackman Scholars Summer Research program at the College, and was a founding member of the Council on Undergraduate Research, a national organization dedicated to promoting research in all disciplines by undergraduates. He was appointed Chair of the ACS Task Force on the General Chemistry Curriculum, served as a member and Chair of the Advanced Placement Chemistry Committee, and is now Chair of the Advanced Placement Redesign Panel for Chemistry, a group that is outlining substantial changes in the nature of the AP Chemistry course and examination. He is also co-author of the most successful “reform” text for general chemistry to date, and is the author of over 30 modular laboratory experiments that are used at hundreds of institutions across the country. He is most proud, however, of his key role in the development and national dissemination of the student-centered, group learning pedagogy for science instruction that is being disseminated nationally through the National Science Foundation–supported POGIL project. His citation reads, "With Professor Spencer’s retirement, his absence from the College will be noticeable, but his manifold contributions will continue to have a profound impact."
Glenn Stevens, Associate Professor of Business, Organizations, and Society, joined the Franklin & Marshall faculty in the spring of 1995 and shortly thereafter completed his Ph.D. at Penn State University. Having retired from his position as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Farm Credit Bank of Baltimore, Stevens arrived on campus ready to begin a second career, this one in academia, in which he was to blend his management experience with his passion for teaching. Stevens' teaching responsibilities focus on corporate finance and investments. His courses-among the most popular in the department-require students to apply economic theories and concepts to a wide range of financial decisions. Stevens has also been instrumental in developing Franklin & Marshall’s Student-Managed Investment Fund (SMIP), an innovative program in which students serve as portfolio managers, investing funds contributed by alumni for that purpose. Students choose investments on the basis of extensive research conducted in the related Portfolio Management class that Stevens teaches. Stevens is extremely successful at integrating technology into his courses, and was recently selected as a Master Professor by the "Business Strategy Game" a creator of global industry simulation curricula in which his students excel. His citation reads, "Although he has published research articles and is presently working on a book-length manuscript, Professor Stevens undoubtedly considers mentoring students as his greatest professional accomplishment at Franklin & Marshall. He has supervised numerous internships and independent studies and maintains close ties to many former students... Professor Stevens, we wish you well on this…your 'second retirement.'" Robert Wiebe, Professor of Geosciences, has devoted his entire professional career to teaching, to his research, and to serving as a very influential mentor of students at Franklin & Marshall College. A Californian by birth and inclination, Robert Wiebe was attracted first to geology, and especially to the pleasure of teasing insights from granites in the field, as an undergraduate at Stanford University. Moving up the coast, he earned a master’s degree at the University of Washington. Then again at Stanford, he completed his Ph.D. in 1966, immediately prior to joining the faculty at Franklin & Marshall. Wiebe has consistently sought to understand how molten material from deep inside the Earth, intruded into the hearts of mountain ranges, is modified by processes that operate as it cools. In the field, he has a quick eye for phenomena that suggest novel interpretations. In the laboratory, he has applied an ever-broadening array of analytical techniques to test his ideas. Earlier in his career, work in California, Nova Scotia, and Labrador yielded a steady stream of single-authored papers, published in the most prestigious journals. Later, Professor Wiebe drew students more directly into his research. By the mid-1990s he was leading a series of expeditions, sponsored by the Keck Consortium, to Mount Desert Island and then to Vinalhaven, in Maine. Once a relatively solitary endeavor, Professor Wiebe'e research became highly collaborative, involving students, former students and colleagues at other institutions. Wiebe formulated a model, now widely known, of sequential introduction and mixing of magmas that form granite intrusions, and he showed how these processes could be related to volcanic activity higher in the Earth's crust. This constitutes a major contribution to our understanding of ways in which mountain belts are constructed. It also prompted Wiebe to take his teaching in a new direction, introducing a course on Volcanoes that has been a valuable contribution to our Foundations program. Wiebe's accomplishments have earned him the Bradley R. Dewey Award and election to Fellowships in both the Mineralogical Society of America and the Geological Society of America. His citation reads, " They have likewise earned him the enduring respect and affection of students and colleagues with whom he has worked together so well, over many years"
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