Contact:  Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 920/832-6590
For Immediate Release					Sept. 1, 1999

Oshkosh Native and Former FTC Chair Named Lawrence University Scarff
Professor


     APPLETON, WIS. -- For the first time in the program's 11-year history,
Lawrence University's Stephen Edward Scarff Memorial Visiting Professorship
will be held by a woman and a Lawrence graduate.
     Oshkosh native Janet D. Steiger, the former chair of the Federal Trade
Commission and widow of former Wisconsin 6th Congressional District
Representative William Steiger, has been named to the prestigious endowed
professorship for the coming academic year.  She will hold the Scarff chair
during third term next spring only and teach the course, "Government and
Regulation."
     Last year's Scarff professor, Jonathan Greenwald, a former career
foreign service officer in the U.S. State Department, will return to
Lawrence in January and serve in that capacity during second term of the
coming academic year.
     The Scarff professorship was established in 1989 by Edward and Nancy
Scarff in memory of their son, Stephen, a 1975 Lawrence graduate who died in
a 1984  automobile accident.  It is designed to bring public servants,
professional leaders and scholars to Lawrence to provide broad perspectives
on the central issues of the day.
     President Carter nominated Steiger to the U.S. Postal Rate Commission
in 1980 and President Reagan appointed her chair of the commission in 1982.
She served on the commission until 1989, presiding over two of the largest
rate cases in U.S. postal service history as well as the USPSŐs electronic
mail project and the Zip Code + 4 implementation.
     In August 1989, President Bush appointed Steiger chair of the Federal
Trade Commission, a 900-person agency that oversees consumer protection in
areas involving consumer credit, advertising and false or deceptive
marketing practices.  The FTC also enforces federal antitrust laws, sharing
the responsibility for merger reviews with the Department of Justice.  She
served as commission chair until April 1996 and remained an FTC commissioner
until September 1997.
     As FTC chair, Steiger was praised for restoring the reputation and
effectiveness of the agency and was cited for her no-nonsense approach to
price-fixing, consumer fraud and questionable advertising practices.
     Counted among her notable victories as FTC chair were price-fixing
cases against Nintendo and two leading manufacturers of infant formula.  One
of her last acts as chairman was the announcement of guidelines for
environmental claims for consumer protection products that was hailed by the
advertising industry as well as consumer groups.
     In addition to her work on the Postal Rate Commission and FTC, Steiger
simultaneously served as chair (1987-89) of the congressionally mandated
Commission on Veterans Educational Policy. 
     A 1957 graduate of Oshkosh High School, Steiger now makes her home in
Washington, D.C.  She earned a bachelor's degree in English from Lawrence in
1961, graduating number one in her class and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
She was named both a Woodrow Wilson Scholar and a Fulbright Scholar as a
senior and did graduate study at the University of Reading in England in
1961-62.  Lawrence awarded her an honorary doctor of laws degree in 1992.
     The former Janet Dempsey, she was married to U.S. Congressman William
Steiger from 1963 until his death in 1978.