Honorary Degrees of Retiring Faculty
John Marvin Parker, Dean of Students, The Institute of Paper Chemistry, 1989
"John Marvin Parker, you are a son and product of the East, but for the last twenty-three years you have been a lively and generous contributor to an institution and a community here in the heartland. In so doing you have left your mark on the minds and in the lives of your colleagues at The Institute of Paper Chemistry and fellow citizens of Appleton.
In your work with Institute students you have accomplished much, by aiding them in the pursuit of their own accomplishments. You have helped the Institute seek, enroll, educate, and place more than 600 students. As their dean, you have served as their mentor, their counselor, their friend. If IPC has sought to educate scientific generalists, you have been the humanistic generalist in their midst. Your care for the Institute's people has made the Institute a better place.
Those same qualities of mind and spirit have informed your active participation in the life of our community. Your commitments to educational quality and to quality of life in Appleton have been expressed through your service on the Board of Education and on the Parks and Recreation Commission. Your efforts to insure opportunities for young people have been conveyed through your leadership in Rotary and the Tri-County Recreation Association. In concert with Lee, you have worked assiduously to enhance and expand the cultural richness of the Fox Cities. We are grateful for these voluntary services even as we commend you for your professional achievements.
As The Institute of Paper Chemistry leaves Appleton to begin anew in another venue, so you leave the Institute to seek new challenges for yourself. May you continue to inspire and assist us all with the same good humor and ready hand, and with the same spirited convictions and civic concern, that you have so cheerfully embodied during these past two decades. It is fitting, that as a parent of a Lawrence alumnus and of a Lawrence student, you will now share with them a Lawrence degree. The college joins The Institute of Paper Chemistry in being proud to claim you.
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."