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Creator: Asprey, Winifred, Hillis, Mary O., Linner, Edward R.
Date: [After 1971]
Text: 5“! MARY LANDON SAGUE 1885-1971 Mary Landon Sague spent most of her life at Vassar College and in the City of Poughkeepsie. Like so many of her genera- tion of teachers at Vassar, she combined her duties as a member of the college family with those of the larger com- munity surrounding it. From her entrance as a freshman in 1903 until her death last March, her love of Vassar College and her interest in it never waned. She joined the faculty in 1909 as an assistant in Chemistry. Her long...
Show more5“! MARY LANDON SAGUE 1885-1971 Mary Landon Sague spent most of her life at Vassar College and in the City of Poughkeepsie. Like so many of her genera- tion of teachers at Vassar, she combined her duties as a member of the college family with those of the larger com- munity surrounding it. From her entrance as a freshman in 1903 until her death last March, her love of Vassar College and her interest in it never waned. She joined the faculty in 1909 as an assistant in Chemistry. Her long association with Chemistry 105 made fast friends of many generations of Vassar students. They recog- nized her worth as a teacher and her interest in them as an advisor. At her retirement and more recently at her death, many alumnae wrote with great affection telling how much hav- ing her as a teacher and friend had meant to them through the years. Rather early in her career the chairmanship of the Department of Chemistry was thrust upon her and imediately her genius for getting things done in an orderly fashion was given full play. She recognized certain shortcomings in the staff in Chemistry and began, by thoughtful appointment, to gather about her a staff of permanent, competent instructors. She was well aware of the needs of the library, too, and with the staff began to build up the collection of books and jour-' nals in the science. Perhaps Mrs. Sague was best known on the campus as the marshal of the faculty and for her direction of the affairs of the Comittee on Fellowships and Graduate Study. Members of the faculty had such faith in her ability and fairness in dealing with all aspects of the difficult task involved that they re- elected her chairman term after term for many years. Her service on comittees was sought but on this one she shone. As she approached retirement, she was asked to undertake the indexing of the faculty minutes. She accepted the assignment, hideous as it was in detail and magnitude. After four years of painstaking labor the Index of Faculty Minutes from 1965 to 1958 had been completed. At that moment in 1958, she must have been the leading authority on the history of the Vassar Faculty. $5’ MARY LANDON SAGUE (continued) Mrs. Sague without seeming effort organized her time so that she could enter fully into the life of the Poughkeepsie com- munity. Her service to the Vassar Brothers‘ Hospital in the years of its expansion from a small community venture to one that holds a dominant place in the Hudson Valley was invalu- able. She was on the Board of Directors of the Family Service Association (now the Family Counselling Service) and soon became its president and served as its presiding officer for many years. After her retirement from Vassar and from many community affairs, she was honored again and again by organi- zations in the city in recognition of her contributions. At its twenty-fifth anniversary dinner, the Poughkeepsie chapter of the American Association of University Women honored her as one of its founders and its first president. As late as 1965, she was the honored guest at a luncheon given by the United Fund. This was in recognition of the work that she had done for the Fund as a member of the board and finally as campaign chairman and president of the Comunity Chest as it was called in her day. She was proud of her Vermont heritage and did not let one for- get that her roots were there. Each sumer she returned to Greensboro, Vermont, a place she loved dearly. At the height of her career, it was particularly fitting that Middlebury College conferred upon her the honorary degree of Doctor of Science, recognizing her both as an educator and as a Vermonter. In the final analysis, though, Mrs. Sague's life was centered in Vassar College. She loved her college and worked consist- ently to keep it a great institution. The well-being of students was one of her primary concerns. She enjoyed teach- ing them. She liked to talk with them and her office was open all hours of the day for conference or just for casual conversa- tion. She used her resources anonymously to help many a student. She entertained them at her house in town. In her last annual report to the President submitted on June 28, 1951, she wrote: "Chemistry is a thrilling subject and teaching it is an enthral- ling, exciting profession." Teaching was her life. Mary Landon Sague was a scholar, a fine teacher and tireless worker and a devoted, charming friend. Winifred Asprey Mary O. Hillis Edward R. Linner I w r7
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Creator: Asprey, Winifred, Daniels, Elizabeth, Drouilhet, Elizabeth, Pounder, Robert
Date: September 14, 1983
Text: At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held A _ September fourteenth, nineteen hundred eighty-three, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted: Marion Tait was born on November A, l9ll, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, and was raised in Preston, Ontario, where she spent an apparently unexceptional childhood as one of a large family. A vivid memory from those early years, however, was of determinedly wandering off at the age of four to follow a passing parade; a kindly policeman...
Show moreAt a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held A _ September fourteenth, nineteen hundred eighty-three, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted: Marion Tait was born on November A, l9ll, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, and was raised in Preston, Ontario, where she spent an apparently unexceptional childhood as one of a large family. A vivid memory from those early years, however, was of determinedly wandering off at the age of four to follow a passing parade; a kindly policeman had to bring the reluctant child home. This was undoubtedly a sign that Marion was not destined to stay long in Preston, Ontario. Upon entering high school she was shunted into the so-called "commercial" track, but her admiring teachers, amazed by this young woman who, by the end of the first year, had far surpassed their own skills in typing and shorthand, urged her to move on to the academic honors program. This she did with great success, earning thirteen "firsts" in her senior year. Her achievements won her scholarships -— one of them from the Independent Order of the Daughters of the Empire -- to Victoria College of the University of Toronto. In college she majored in Classics because, as she stated years later, “if one was to understand anything, it seemed important to begin at the beginning."1 The four years of her college career were important in shaping the independent and forthright spirit which remained with her. At Toronto she "belonged to a group that considered itself intellectual, radical, and oh so sophisticated." Moreover, she “read T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, and Freud. We were 'women,' not 'girls,' and called each other by last names.“ Advised by her professors to seek out a graduate school in the U.S. rather than remain at Toronto, Marion Tait your- neyed south in the midst of the Great Depression to begin advanced work in Latin and Creek literature at Bryn Mawr Col- lege. Her work there was distinguished. She travelled to Italy for study in Rome at what turned out to be JUSE the wrong time. Years later, she loved to describe in vivid and rather frightening detail the triumphant entry into Rome of Adolf Hitler, where he was greeted by his ally, Mu$$°l'"'; Marion was there, too, swept up in the crowd that thronged the Piazza Venezia. Eventually she had to seek refuge lﬂh the house of some hospitable Romans who plucked her, On t e point of being trampled underfoot, from the mob. Her Ph D in hand, Marion taught first at Sweet Briar College, then at Mount Holyoke, whenceshe cameDégn Vgﬁjaghén f 3 , She came as t e new _, _ 23:2’;§€ot2e¢gg§ugity7deeply divided over educational policy. Her predecessor as Dean, C. Mildred Thompson» and PreS'dent e - ' ' Colle e ‘Quotations are from the VarsitY Graduateh V'ctor'a g ' Fvhrniry l9h9- 2 H Noble MacCracken had durin9 the WE" Yea“ d"""'°°"’d a“ enry ' - ' lt ative three Year degree PF°9'am w'th a new c'term ‘n ad' a ern ' - ' ' . . _ Th's innovation had divided the dIt'on to SW0 heggbzontgigﬁding ‘who had been 8PP°'“ted Pres?‘ college. heagﬁd of the war had,not been able to calm the Ssgﬁbiedtwaters inasmuch as many members of thg faculty 9 . ' t liked and wanted to continue the n€:e5¥g5:T-8:? dégﬁeeés many were determined to return to Y Id not bear those members of the facultY who CO“ There wﬁrﬁo each other if they could avoid face-to-face con- fﬁogﬁgiions by altering their routes through Mai“ t0 the post office. Marion Taitls reserved and patient diplomacy soon took over According to one colleague, when Marlo" Firs? arrived at Vassar, she sat quietw in facultY meet'“9§ and d'd FOE plunge in to run the show. She refused to find out whic faculty members stood for which plan. Even her choice of seat in faculty meetings conveyed her attitude: she did not sit with the president, facing the faculty, as had her pred— ecessor, so that she could see which way people voted._ In- stead, she sat in the front row with the faculty and lISt€n€d to what she heard. One person reports that "she was tactful and got on with everybody with her cool, balanced attitude and pleasant warmth. When she did speak her mind, she car- ried conviction.“ In those first years at Vassar, Marion was able to spend more time with students than was possible later in her career, and she was extraordinarily effective with them. Those who were troubled came to her for sage and sympathetic counsel, those who were undecided about courses or career found in her a ready and knowledgeable adviser. Her job at that time en- compassed the duties now performed by the Dean of the Col- lege, the Dean of Studies and the Vice President for Admini- strative and Student Services. As the years went by and some of the tasks she had performed were relegated to others, she saw less and less of students on a daily basis. This she re- gretted, and her return to full-time teaching in I966 after seventeen years of continuous service as Dean was prompted in part by a desire to return to the classroom and to stu- dents. As a teacher she was just as effective as she had been as administrator; nunerous devoted members of her classes will readily attest to that fact. Although she accomplished much in her admin’ t ' _ _ is rative rgleé such as helping to coordinate Vassar's teacher-prepa- n program with the State Department of Education, per- haps the most important moment of Marion Tait's deanship was her defiant challenge in November I959 when the trustees a peared to be about to implement Beardsle Ruml's ‘d P- Y I eas of economy. Ruml's Me o t T ' ~ fifties and it inflme oda rustee was widely read in the u nce many who hoped to streamline lib- eral arts colleges and make them more "efficient " I i959 what was proposed was a move to a 20-to-l student f nl ’ . _ _ - acu ty rat'°' a"d Parlng and tampering with the curriculum. The 3 Ruml Report suggested that the trustees w ' than the faculty in shaping the education:$Igo??c?egeofethéob college, a notion counter to the tenets of governance intro- duced at Vassar by MacCracken in I915. (This new governance was a prototype of academic governance at many other colleges in the country.) Marion Tait at this point rose in the fac- ulty to voice her considered opinion that the Ruml report was in a most essential way a reactionary educational docu- ment and that all colleges would either move forward or back- ward as they responded to its proposals. She accused the trustees of seeming to ignore that governance which gave the faculty the right to determine educational policy. And she called upon the faculty to rise up in protest. They did, and subsequently their differences with the trustees were settled amicably, with the governance intact. It may well be that the course of Vassar history was significantly in- fluenced by Marion Tait's resolve. Not always did Marion agree with the faculty, or with the students. When she did not, she was not afraid to say so and to make difficult decisions, even when they were un- popular or caused her pain. She constantly searched, in her own mind, for what was right, what needed her support, what was possible and desirable, and what should be rejected. Her special talent was an ability to isolate differences of opinion and tackle matters of principle, leaving problems of personality aside. Her service to the college as administrator was over only temporarily after 1966, for she was called back in I970 under President Alan Simpson to serve an interim term while a search was conducted for a new Dean. Even after she again resumed her teaching post for the few remaining years before her retirement, she was called on again and again to render sensible advice to the community. In the words of one col- league, “she took on the role of elder stateswoman." She retired in I975 and went to live in Massachusetts, first in Weston and then in Concord, where she died of cancer on September 30, I982. For many, Marion Tait embodied the highest ideals ofthis college. Her belief in the excellence of the liberal arts and her optimistic faith in her students guided and sustained colleagues and students alike. She was a woman of parts. She loved gardening and watching birds, and roughing it at her Vermont summer house. She loved Homer and unfortunately _ never completed the work on Homeric simile that she took with her into retirement. Though she published little, she was known and respected in the profession, and served for many years on the Managing Committee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and on the JUFY for the Prix de Rome of the American Academy in Rome. She will be remembered for the remarkable detachment which coupled with an innate compassion, gave ha; intelgect ’ ' , o o u the strength to resolve numerous thorny ISSUGS h who have seen it will forget the sight of Marion in a faculty meeting, turning as she stood, her glasses perched on the end of her nose, her right hand punctuating her remarks with abrupt strokes, as she went straight to the heart of the mat- ter and offered a telling insight Or, mOre Often, 8 SO|ution? This patrician paradoxically sprung from humble beginnings has left her mark on Vassar College. May the pragmatic ideal ism which guided her continue to guide us who follow in her stead. Respectfully submitted, Winifred Asprey Elizabeth Daniels Elizabeth Drouilhet Robert Pounder
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Creator: Gleason, Josephine, Pennock, Clarice, Spicer, Verna, Asprey, Winifred
Date: [After 1966]
Text: ‘+3 SYDNOR HARBISON WALKER 1891 - 1966 Miss Sydnor Harbison Walker, Vassar alumna, faculty member, trustee and Assistant to the President, died December 12, 1966, at her home in Millbrook, New York, at the age of 75. She was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the daughter of Walter and Mary Sydnor Perkins Walker. After attending Louisville schools, Miss Walker came to Vassar and was graduated in 1913 with honors. Economics was her major interest and she returned to Vassar to teach it in 1917, with...
Show more‘+3 SYDNOR HARBISON WALKER 1891 - 1966 Miss Sydnor Harbison Walker, Vassar alumna, faculty member, trustee and Assistant to the President, died December 12, 1966, at her home in Millbrook, New York, at the age of 75. She was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the daughter of Walter and Mary Sydnor Perkins Walker. After attending Louisville schools, Miss Walker came to Vassar and was graduated in 1913 with honors. Economics was her major interest and she returned to Vassar to teach it in 1917, with an M.A. from the University of Southern California. Professor Emeritus Mabel Newcomer, a young col- league at the time, writes that "her quick wit and gaiety made her well liked among students in the residential hall where she lived ..... as a teacher she exhibited these same qualities, combined with clarity of thought and expression .... although she could be sharply critical of the careless and the dilatory." In 1919 Miss Walker decided that she needed some practical experience and went to work for a pioneering firm of indust- rial relations consultants where she wrote their weekly news letter. Three members of this young firm became college presidents and some years later Miss Walker herself was on the way to the presidency of a prominent college for women. A fourth member of the firm was Beardsley Ruml. In 1921 Miss Walker engaged in the relief work of the American Friends Service Comittee, first in Vienna and later in Russia In a letter to President Emeritus MacCracken, she vividly describes her experience. "We are now feeding about 15,000 a week through our depots, and we are supplying clothing to nearly 3,000. Our work is done on an individual case basis, which we think to be the soundest, not only from a social point of view, but because we believe that method essential for the creation of a spirit of international good-will - at no time a secondary object in our program... In addition to the feeding and clothing.... we are teaching mothers to care for their babies through the welfare centers; we are supporting a score of hospitals and other institutions for children; we have restocked farms with poultry and cattle and are helping farmers to build up permanent food resources for the city; and we are assisting materially in such constructive Austrian enterprises as the building of suburban land settlements and the creation of a ‘f4 SYDNOR HARBISON WALKER — continued market abroad for the art work of many gifted persons...we feel that we are a real part of the life of the city and not a superimposed group of relief workers." It is not hard for those who knew Miss Walker to visualize her presiding over relief work in the Imperial Palace of the Hofburg, whose stately corridors were cheerless and deserted save for these activities. Returning to America in 1924, Miss Walker combined her inter- ests in industrial relations with social welfare and educa- tion by becoming a research assistant at the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund in New York. In the meantime she received her doctorate in economics from Columbia University in 1928 with a dissertation on "Social Work and the Training of Social Workers." When the Rockefeller Foundation absorbed the Spelman Fund in 1929, Miss Walker began her association of twenty years with the Foundation. She moved from the research department to the position of Associate Director of the Social Sciences Division and finally became its Acting Director. While there she developed a program of international relations involving considerable travel in Europe and South America in very respon- sible positions. In 1933 she collaborated in the preparation of the report of President Hoover's Comittee on Social Trends, contributing a chapter entitled, "Privately Supported Social Work." In 1939 Miss Walker was proposed for trustee of Vassar College by the Faculty Club and she was elected by the board. Again quoting Miss Newcomer, "her contribution as a Vassar trustee was very rea1....Her experience on the faculty and as a student, and her current work in the Rockefeller Foundation, had given her a real understanding of the problems of the college and enabled her to offer constructive criticism and suggestion for change." _ Her resignation as trustee occurred in October 1942, and came because of a crippling illness which led eventually to her permanent confinement to a wheel chair. A friend and fellow alumna described her long battle against mistaken diagnoses, official predictions of helplessness and the end of her career. "Sydnor simply rejected the idea of permanent immobility.... for a person who never knew what fatigue meant, who never could understand inactivity, either mental or physical, 1 < SYDNOR HARBISON WALKER - continued nothing could have been more tragic than paralysis." When Miss Walker realized that complete recovery was impossible, on her own initiative she went to one of the first rehabilitation clinics in New York and learned to help herself to a remarkable degree. Also she wrote, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation published in l945, a report entitled "The First Hundred Days of the Atomic Age." In 1948 another opportunity to serve Vassar came to Miss Walker when Miss Blanding named her Assistant to the President. She returned to live in Metcalf House and became an active participant in Vassar's development. Miss Blanding knew her as "a brilliant woman who never lost her zest for life nor her interest in things of the mind. She was a voracious reader and stimulating companion." After Miss Walker's retirement in 1957, she bought a large colonial house in Millbrook, reminiscent of her native Kentucky. There she continued her vital interest in Vassar and in the many friendships she had made throughout her rich and colorful life. Respectfully submitted, Josephine Gleason Clarice Pennock Verna Spicer Winifred Asprey, Chairman XVIII BBQ-336
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Creator: Campbell, Mildred, Linner, Edward, Sague, Mary, Asprey, Winifred
Date: [After 1965]
Text: 3i MARY EVELYN WELLS 1881 - 1965 Most of you present today never heard of Mary Evelyn Wells. Few of you knew her personally. Some of you remember her as a distin- guished senior colleague, for you were but young instructors when she became Professor Emeritus of Mathematics in 1948. Yet Vassar College owes much of its present distinction to women such as Miss Wells. Miss Wells was first and foremost a mathematician, "Euclidean in her approach to life," as one friend characterized her...
Show more3i MARY EVELYN WELLS 1881 - 1965 Most of you present today never heard of Mary Evelyn Wells. Few of you knew her personally. Some of you remember her as a distin- guished senior colleague, for you were but young instructors when she became Professor Emeritus of Mathematics in 1948. Yet Vassar College owes much of its present distinction to women such as Miss Wells. Miss Wells was first and foremost a mathematician, "Euclidean in her approach to life," as one friend characterized her. Her pre- sentation of mathematics had depth and was sound, with that nice blend of scholarliness and integrity that students are so quick to recognize. But it was something more; for in its own way it was a work of art -- the work of a master-teacher. How many of us, like Mary Wells, can so enthrall students that they do not hear the sound of the bell at the end of the class hour? Her gift of humor, fairmindedness and inexhaustible energy, her discretion, loyalty to colleagues, selflessness, sense of the "wholeness" of the Vassar com- munity and what it worked for are the qualities that gained for her the respect and confidence of her colleagues and inevitably led to service on committee after committee. As a long-time member of the Committee on Admission, Miss Wells was adamant in her rejection of candidates unfortunate enough to have acquired even one low score, whatever the field. To quote her: "Vassar College is able to get students who can; why take those who can't?" President MacCracken comments that perhaps this was one of the times in which numbers really got in Miss Wells‘ way. Though a person of strong convictions, she was a firm believer in democratic processes. vShe fought for her beliefs, but when defeated, worked with equal vigor to uphold the decision of the majority. Miss Wells came to Vassar College in l9l5, the year in which President MacCracken was inaugurated. A graduate of Mount Holyoke, she held both the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago where she had worked under Professor E. H. Moore, a rare distinction for any young mathematician, especially a woman. She had already taught for five years at Mount Holyoke, and, as acting Associate Professor, for another year at Oberlin. She was, however, appointed to and accepted an instructorship at Vassar, a rank which she held for five years. At this time mathematics was a required course for freshmen, and Miss Wells was assigned to teach six of these sections. Later promotions came rapidly for that era; at the age of forty-seven she became a full professor and served the college in this capacity for twenty more years. <32 MARY EVELYN WELLS (Continued) Along with her dedication to mathematics and to teaching, Miss Wells had interests beyond the confines of the campus. Perhaps her greatest enthusiasm outside Vassar was centered on India. In 1926, she was invited to the University of Madras as Head of the Department of Mathematics. This experience gave her a last- ing love for that country and an awareness of its problems. She returned to Madras in 1936-37 and continued to serve actively as a trustee of the University long after her retirement from Vassar College. Almost certainly, it was only love for her family and sensitivity to their needs that kept her from going back to India. Indeed, her devotion to her family was marked throughout her life. A younger sister and lively nephews enjoyed many a summer at her home in Maine. This, then, is the woman to whom we pause to pay tribute: a woman whose stern sense of devotion to her profession led her to great distinction as a mathematician and teacher; a person committed to the highest ideal of a Vassar education; and one whose dynamic influence still remains with many associates and students. Mildred Campbell Edward Linner Mary Sague Winifred Asprey, Chairman xv: 323
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