Honorary Degrees of Retiring Faculty
James D. Dana, John R. Kimberly Distinguished Professor in the American Economic System, 2001
"James D. Dana, neither Lawrence College nor you presumably knew what lay ahead when you abandoned your New England roots in 1961 to come with your degrees from Yale and M.I.T. to this small Midwestern institution. Your forty years at Lawrence have spanned an institutional name change and four presidents, but throughout you have consistently devoted immeasurable energy and perspicacity to your teaching and to your service to the Lawrence community.
Your skill and passion as a teacher have been proved again and again and, in 1978, earned you the Excellence in Teaching Award. Regularly students cite your patience, humor, and clarity and praise both the organization and the dynamism of your lectures. Colleagues consider your approach to introductory economics bold and innovative, and two in particular were sufficiently influenced by your tutelage during their student years at Lawrence to return with Ph.D.'s from Harvard and Northwestern and teach by your side in the department.
You worked diligently to add more mathematics to the economics curriculum and to create the mathematics-economics interdisciplinary major; and while students may groan at the required calculus, statistics, and econometrics courses, you showed foresight and have given Lawrence graduates an edge in the marketplace. Economics majors have fared well during your tenure. In fact, three economics majors who now are or have been members of the Lawrence Board of Trustees will attest to the value of your department's curriculum and to your skills as a teacher: all are presidents or CEOs of successful corporations and have returned to serve their alma mater. Other alumni and students too innumerable to mention, including those about to graduate in the class of 2001, will echo these sentiments.
Besides the mortar board these graduates and you are wearing, you have worn many hats in service to the community of Lawrence University. You have held the John N. McNaughton Endowed Chair in Economics and become the first holder of the John R. Kimberly Distinguished Professorship in The American Economic System. You have served the Lawrence faculty with diligence and wisdom, from running the London Center to chairing numerous faculty committees to becoming Acting Dean of the Faculty in 1991.
The hat that you have always worn best, however, has been that of teacher and advisor. Students have always found you available to them, even when you seemed inaccessible, a trait that derives not from your personality but from what one colleague described as the interior design motif of your office: 'early clutter.' So while they had to enter your office sideways because a file cabinet kept the door from opening fully in Main Hall or while they had to rest their feet on your legendary stacks of papers on the floor of your office in Briggs, your openness and warmth encouraged all students to overcome the obstacles in your office, so you could help them to overcome the intellectual obstacles in the discipline of economics.
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."