Honorary Degrees of Retiring Faculty
Edwin Herbert Olson, Junior, Professor of Psychology, 1989
"For over three decades, a familiar cry of students and faculty in times of personal difficulty has been 'Call Ed Olson.' And you, Edwin Herbert Olson, Junior, have responded to those calls, whether made during office hours or at midnight, with calm concern and with professional compassion. In your responses, you have made a difference in the lives of those whom you've counseled, a difference between despair and hope, between drift and purposefulness. Throughout these years you have conducted your work with quiet dignity and exceptional effectiveness, much of it necessarily and properly hidden from the public view.
It was as a practitioner that you taught Lawrence students in clinical psychology, personality, and psychopathology. Students also welcomed the opportunity to study with you in tutorials and independent studies and many have gone on to work in human services as a consequence of your example and encouragement. In every teaching situation, you always had an apt anecdote or a telling story to illustrate the point. Your teaching consistently stressed that the subject matter was real and relevant to the lives we lead and to how we lead them. And in your many services outside the classroom and counseling center, whether in the Netherlands, in professional associations, on editorial boards, or state committees and councils, you have extended your contributions to people beyond the campus as well.
Your colleagues at the college know and will remember you for your forthright judgments and views, albeit ones that you often delivered in an understated fashion. Indeed, it may come as a surprise to some that in counseling situations you are a follower of Carl Roger's non-directive approach. Your quiet leadership has been a steadying and stabilizing influence at Lawrence, both in faculty meetings and in departmental deliberations. We will miss your presence and your perspective even as we wish you well in your new endeavors.
And now, 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."