Cornell Alumni News - eCommons@Cornell - Cornell University

awarded Woodrow Wilson Fellowships
for the academic year 1967-68. The fellowships,
given to students who intend to
make teaching a career, are generally
given in the humanities and social
sciences.
Three of the Wilson winners—Barry
L. Weller, an English major, and John S.
Blackton and William A. Galston, both
political science majors—also received
Danforth Graduate Fellowships. The
Danforths are awarded for one calendar
year, but are normally renewable for a
total of four years. A total of 120 such
fellowships were given this year across
the country.
Thirty-two seniors won National
Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships,
and seven students are among the
ninety winners of the Herbert H. Lehman
Fellowships for graduate study in the social
sciences and public and international
affairs. Lehman Fellows receive up to
$5,000 a year for four years to support
graduate studies at a New York State
school.
Miss Frances C. Selgin, an anthropology
major, was selected for honorable
mention for a Danforth, and won a Marshall
Fellowship from the Marshall Aid
Commemorative Commission, London.
Colleges Adopt S-U Grading
Six out of the seven undergraduate
colleges have now adopted an S-U grading
option, including, most recently, the
College of Engineering. Only the School
of Hotel Administration does not offer
courses for S-U grades.
The proposal for engineers does not
give the option to first-term freshmen. A
student may only take one S-U course
per term with the consent of his adviser
and the instructor in the course. Nor may
he use the option to avoid a mark of D—
in order to apply, both the student and
the instructor must agree in writing before
the end of the first two weeks of
the semester.
The colleges hope the S-U option will
encourage students to take courses outside
their field which interest them, but
in which they could not expect an average-boosting
grade.
An extension of the S-U plan has,
however, been turned down by the educational
policy committee of the College
of Arts & Sciences. Prof. Leonard Silver,
mathematics, had planned to give either
A's or incompletes in one of his courses
this term, "to help the student avoid the
ulcers and the kind of studying that just
prepares them for examinations*" "I am
May 1967
aiming for a totally educational experience
for the student," Silver said.
Richard G. Caldwell '68 (Sigma Chi)
of Evanston, Illinois, has been elected
president of the Interfraternity Council,
succeeding outgoing president Samuel R.
Berger '67. In his final speech before the
election, Caldwell told house presidents
that the IFC will have to continue to take
"great strides" in the future if fraternities
are to remain on campus. This year's
policies and actions indicate the future
direction of the IFC, he stated.
Acknowledging criticism of the fraternity
system, Caldwell said "the system
must not be criticized or praised for a
few houses. . . . Next year is going to be
crucial, and determined but thoughtful
leadership will be necessary." He urged
fraternities to comply with new university
legislation on human rights, and
pledged support of the IFC in this effort.
Tyrone Brown, a third year Law student,
has been appointed a law clerk to
Chief Justice Earl Warren. The appointment
is effective in July after his graduation.
Provisional analysis of a questionnaire
recently administered to Cornell coeds
indicates they are more studious than
girls from other schools. In results from
other schools including Bryn Mawr,
Hunter, Antioch and Sweet Briar, 41 per
cent of the girls agreed that their friends
"consider finishing college important, and
it is rare for a girl to drop out before
graduation." At Cornell, 99 per cent of
the 840 coeds tested thought their
friends agreed.
Faculty & Staff
m Prof. Ella M. Cushman, MS '28, emeritus,
Home Economics, died on Feb. 21,
1967. She retired from the university in
1954 after 27 years on the faculty. She
was instrumental in developing Cornell's
Extension program in home management
and was the author of Management in
Homes.
Professor Paul P. Bijlaard, emeritus, died
on March 9, 1967, after a short illness.
He was a professor of theoretical and applied
mechanics in the College of Engineering
from 1949 until he retired in 1966.
He had received the highest award given
by the Netherlands, Knight of the Order of
the Netherlands Lion, and in 1966 was
elected a fellow of the New York Academy
of Sciences in "outstanding recognition for
scientific achievement and promotion of
science." He developed a theory of plastic
buckling of plates and shells which has
been used in aircraft and missile design for
more than 20 years, and also developed a
cantilever method for erection of a new
kind of truss bridge.
His surviving family includes two alumni,
a son, Anton Bijlaard '57, and a daughter,
Mrs. Hanny Cummings, Grad '50.
Prof. William N. McFarland, zoology,
has been named chairman of the section
on ecology & systematics in the division of
biological sciences. A member of the faculty
since 1961, he succeeds LaMont C.
Cole.
Prof. Dwight A. Webster '40, a member
of the faculty since 1942, has been appointed
head of the department of conservation
at the College of Agriculture, succeeding
Prof. Gustav A. Swanson. For his
trout research, Webster received the 1965
"Trout Conservation Award."
Two university faculty members are
among the nation's first recipients of fellowships
from the National Endowment for
the Humanities, a subsection of the newlyestablished
National Foundation on the
Arts and the Humanities. Arthur M. Mizener,
the Old Dominion Foundation professor
of the humanities, received one of the
fifty-seven senior fellowships awarded, and
Prof. Michael Kammeπ, American History,
received one of 130 summer fellowships
awarded.
Clinton L. Rossiter '39, the John L.
Senior Professor of American Institutions,
delivered the Edward Douglass White Lectures
on Citizenship at Louisiana State U
in Baton Rouge on March 13, 14, and 15.
The general title for the lectures was "The
Quest for Nationhood and Modernity, 1776-
1861." On a slightly different quest, he and
three other government and history professors
received considerable local and national
publicity when they took time on a
March Sunday to wash windows, scrub
floors, and clean the men's room in West
Sibley. They complained of inadequate janitorial
service. One went on to say, "We
think that reflects the priorities on this* campus:
The sciences must work in antiseptic
surroundings, but the humanities can live
in filth."
Effective July 1, Dr. Alton Meister, MD
'45, has been appointed first Israel Rogosin
Professor and chairman of the department
of biochemistry at Cornell University Medical
College. Dr. Meister, an authority on
the chemistry and intermediary metabolism
of amino acids, is currently professor and
chairman of the biochemistry department at
Tufts University School of Medicine.
He succeeds Nobel Prize winner Dr. Vincent
du Vigneaud, who has been chairman
of the biochemistry department at Cornell's
Medical College since 1938. Dr. du Vigneaud
will become a professor of chemistry
on the Ithaca campus of the university.
Before going to Tufts, Dr. Meister had
been associated with the National Institutes
of Health in Maryland for many years and
was senior surgeon and head of the clinical
biological research section at the NIH. He
is the author of Biochemistry of the Amino
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