Honorary Degrees of Retiring Faculty
Richard G. Long, Associate Professor of Mathematics, 1993
"Richard Long, in 1969 you returned to your native Midwest when you joined the Lawrence faculty following your education on the west coast and your early professional career in the east. In the intervening 24 years, you have been a guiding force in the development of mathematics at the college and many of its present configurations owe their origins to your early initiatives.
Well before the term 'math anxiety' became the vogue, you sought to make the discipline accessible and engaging to all students, not just the gifted few. Your innovative efforts to introduce the application of mathematics across the curriculum, your work with minority students in summer enrichment programs, your formation of math workshops for Lawrentians in the 1970s, and, most of all, your extraordinary patience, support, and nurturing of your students all evidence your commitment to extending the understanding of mathematics to all. Today, as we seek connections and bridges among disciplines, your efforts and your teaching provide us a model for the effort.
Your early involvement with exploring the educational uses of the computer also anticipated our current situation. Your participation in the first computer studies program at Lawrence was a first step towards our now-flourishing Mathematics-Computer Science major, but of equal significance was your commitment to educating all students about the computer revolution, then no more than a gleam in the eye of the institution. Finally, your efforts to encourage and support mathematics students in the actuarial sciences has been a particularly distinctive element of your contributions to the college and to the lives of many individuals who have become professionals in the discipline.
You have guided the department through many moments of transition and change and have been a steadying influence at every turn. And your persistent willingness to serve as department chef for mathematics picnics for several decades has brought you notoriety, as it were, sine your colleagues confess that they were often unable to discern the precise difference between the burgers and the charcoal. That caveat aside, you have, in your own quiet and unassuming way, left us a legacy of dedication to students and to helping them gain access to the richness and wonder of mathematics.
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."
