Honorary Degrees of Retiring Faculty
Marjory Ruth Irvin, Professor of Music, 1987
"The merger of Milwaukee-Downer College and Lawrence College brought to Appleton a pianist, music theorist, composer, scholar, author, specialist in music in general studies, baker of sourdough bread, grand-slam-riverboat gambler in bridge tournaments, and equestrienne.
Marjory Ruth Irvin, for forty years, first at Milwaukee-Downer and now at Lawrence, you have been a personal force with students, colleagues, deans, and presidents. The successful merger of Downer and Lawrence was achieved, to no small extent, as a result of your diplomatic skills. The College and the Conservatory have found common chords of artistic and intellectual harmony as a result of your liberating perceptions. Your book, Perspectives in Music, draws together the professional and non-professional worlds of music. Your unique and unequalled curriculum in the instruction of common practice music theory plunges headlong into the twenty-first century with its utilization of advanced computer technology. As pianist, you have embraced and then emboldened the legacy of Gieseking.
Today, we thank and salute you as you head off to Bluegrass country and the thoroughbred horses you so admire. May you add yet another triple crown to what you already hold: teacher, artist, and colleague par excellence.
By the authority vested in me, I now confer upon you the degree of Master of Arts, ad eundem, and admit you to its rights, its privileges, and its obligations."