1954

It has been a great few months for the academics among us. Ron Picket, a professor of psychology in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Lowell in Massachusetts, has been granted tenure by the board of trustees of the university. Ron received his master's and doctorate from the University of Michigan and now lives in Littleton, Mass.

Roger Gilmore, who is the provost of the school of the Art Institute of Chicago, has been elected president of the National Association of Schools of Art and Design for a three-year term. Roger was elevated to the post of provost of the school of the Art Institute in September after serving as dean of the school from 1965 to 1987. The school is one of the outstanding and best known art and design institutions in the country.

Roger writes that he and Beatrice celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary this fall and that his family is active and well. Beatrice, who has her Ph.D., is in her 15th year as a school psychologist. The Gilmores' three children—Chris, Jennifer, and Leslie Margaret—are respectively 1) in the bagel business in Fort Collins, Colo.; 2) a certified ski instructor and freelance commercial artist in Salt Lake City, Utah; and 3) serving as the architect on site for a historic preservation job on a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Springfield, II1. What a productive family! Congratulations to you, Roger. Good luck in your new position at the Art Institute, and as president of the N.A.S.A.D.

John Pratt was the subject of a feature article in the "Choice People" section of the Fort Collins Coloradoan. The article, entitled "From Air Force to Academia," discusses John's life as "an interesting tapestry." John is currently an English professor at Colorado State University, where his "academic career—as scholar, teacher, writer—overlays and intertwines with 20 years as a professional soldier, thousands of hours of jet piloting and instructing, more than two decades as ski patrolman."

Since graduating from Dartmouth, John has picked up additional degrees at the University of California at Berkeley, Columbia, Princeton. He was one of the early faculty members of the Air Force Academy. He served as a combat pilot in Vietnam. His books include fiction and non-fiction and his latest is a how-to-do-it manual entitled Writing From Scratch: The Essay. (See page 63, Feb. DAM.) His scholarly credentials include two Fulbright scholarships—one to Lisbon in 1973 and one to the Soviet Union in 1980. Lest you think he has no time for personal life, his wife of 20 years, Dory Pratt, is an interior designer. They have six children who range in age from 25 to 31, including a park ranger in Alaska, an exgeologist doing personnel work, an artists' representative in Chicago, a computer analyst in Dallas, an assistant manager for a country club, and one who's looking for a job. John says "My children are about as eclectic as I am." As the newspaper article states, John's "life story might have come out of a novel."

Keep the news coming. It's great to hear from you all.

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