The Faculty
JOHN W. FINCH, Professor of English, has been named the first William R. Kenan Professor at Dartmouth. He recently was named Chairman of the new Drama Department, and for the past year he served as chairman of the ad hoc faculty committee developing new opportunities in general education.
The new endowed professorship was created by a $750,000 grant from the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust of New York City. The trust was established under the will of the late Mr. Kenan, a chemist and Florida industrialist who died in 1965.
Professor Finch has long been concerned with improving undergraduate education, a field in which the Kenan trustees have expressed a major concern.
He also is a playwright and has written poetry and literary criticism. His plays include The Wanhope Building (1947), produced on Broadway; The DownstairsDragon (1954), produced on the East and West Coasts; and The Winner (1963).
DAVID M. LEMAL, Associate Professor of Chemistry, has been awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship. He was one of 73 young scientists in the nation awarded the two-year fellowships averaging $8,750 annually.
Research into the synthesis and chemistry of highly strained molecules and the nature of certain connected reactions is Professor Lemal's project for the first year.
The Sloan Foundation does not accept direct applications for these fellowships. Candidates are nominated by established scientists who are familiar with the nominees' research potential.
JACOB NEUSNER, Associate Professor of Religion, has been appointed to the executive committee of the Council of the Society of Biblical Literature. He lectured at the Buffalo (N. Y.) Jewish Community Forum in March, and has April engagements to deliver the annual Morron Lecture at Hamilton College and address a Princeton conference on the academic study of religion.
His book History of the Jews in Babylonia, Vol. III From Shapur I to ShapurII will be published in May by E. J. Brill, Leiden, Holland. In August Volume IV, The Age of Shapur II will appear, and in December the second revised edition of Volume I, The Parthian Period.
Two other of his books, Judaism in theSecular Age: Essays on Fellowship,Community and Freedom and Yohananben Zakkai and Crisis of First-centuryJudaism, have just gone to press.
FIVE Dartmouth faculty names are among the 1500 experts from thirty countries who have contributed to the new International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences being published this spring by Macmillan and Free Press.
College-connected contributors are: Crane Brinton, Visiting Professor of History; Henry W. Ehrmann, Professor of Law and Political Science; Frank W. Fetter, Haney Visiting Professor of Economics; Robert A. McKennan '25, Professor of Anthropology; Lawrence I. Radway, Professor of Government; and Kalman H. Silvert, until last year Professor of Government.
Professor Fetter and Professor Brinton also contributed to the first edition, the Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences, published between 1930 and 1935.
The revised edition, which contains eight million words in 17 volumes, is based on recommendations of a 1955 study group for reducing descriptive matter and increasing material on methods, including interrelations between the social sciences and other disciplines. Its publication results from the merger of The Free Press of Glencoe with CrowellCollier Publishing Company which had acquired The Macmillan Company, publisher of the original edition.
PROF. Mario di Bonaventura of the Music Department was a member of the International Panel of the Contemporary Music Festival held in Prague in March.
He also recently conducted concerts of the Lodz Philharmonic and the Great National Polish Radio Orchestra in Katowice, Poland. His programs included first performances of works by Bartok and Charles Ives.
His appearance marked the first time a concert of an American artist was broadcast direct in Poland. Professor di Bonaventura also appeared on Polish television.
An engagement in Budapest will conclude his two-term tour of European music centers, and he will soon return to campus to prepare for the Sixth Summer Congregation of the Arts in Hopkins Center.
PROF. Henry W. Ehrmann of the Government Department addressed a convocation at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. His topic was "Rebels with a Cause: Student Politics in Western Germany."
Articles published by Professor Ehrmann in various professional journals have recently been reprinted in five different readers and similar media destined for classroom use.
PROF. Walter H. Stockmayer of the Chemistry Department is an associate editor of Macromolecules, a new journal of the American Chemical Society.
The newly established journal will cover the chemical synthesis of polymers and biopolymers; the reactions of these materials with other substances, and with heat, light, and atomic radiation, and the properties of polymers in solution. It contains full-length research papers, communications and reviews, all emphasizing fundamental aspects of polymer chemistry.
In another professional accolade, Professor Stockmayer was elected 1968 chairman of the American Chemical Society's Division of Polymer Chemistry. In 1952-53 he served in a similar capacity, representing the Division on the Society's national council.
RVOBERT A. FELDMESSER, Associate Professor of Sociology, was an invited participant in the "ES '70" conference held in New Orleans, March 6-8. The meeting, sponsored by the U. S. Office of Education, brought together about 100 leading educators and disciplinary specialists for the purpose of developing means of integrating academic and vocational elements into a . new "organic curriculum" for secondary schools.
Professor Feldmesser, who came to Dartmouth in 1964 after teaching at Harvard and Brandeis, serves as executive director of Sociological Resources for Secondary Schools, an agency of the American Sociological Association, financially supported by the National Science Foundation, which was created to stimulate development of materials for use in secondary-school social studies.
THE Wall Street Journal's editorial page feature "Notable and Quotable" recently presented remarks on the Kiewit Computation Center by Prof. John G. Kemeny of the Mathematics Department. Excerpts from a General Electric Company publication were, in part:
"Since we were convinced that in the next generation this knowledge [of computers] would be as important as knowing how to read and write, we decided to teach not just one or two percent of our students, but the vast majority of them to use a computer as an essential part of their liberal education.
"While many people worry that the computer will somehow dehumanize relations, it could, if it is intelligently used, have the exact opposite effect. The sheer weight of numbers forces people to make too many decisions much too impersonally right now in our society because human beings just haven't got the time or energy to do otherwise. The computer is a magnificent tool that will make possible greater personalization of many more services for the first time."
John W. Finch, Professor of English, whohas been chosen to be the first holder ofthe William R. Kenan Professorship.
