La Salle Magazine Summer 1987 La Salle University
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La Salle University La Salle University Digital Commons La Salle Magazine University Publications Summer 1987 La Salle Magazine Summer 1987 La Salle University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/lasalle_magazine Recommended Citation La Salle University, "La Salle Magazine Summer 1987" (1987). La Salle Magazine. 83. https://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/lasalle_magazine/83 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the University Publications at La Salle University Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in La Salle Magazine by an authorized administrator of La Salle University Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Summer 1987 L a S a lle A QUARTERLY LA SALLE UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE The 125th Commencement Volume 31 Number 3 LA SALLE Summer 1987 A QUARTERLY LA SALLE UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE (USPS 299-940) CONTENTS 1 THE HONORS PROGRAM In many cases, La Salle’s honors students university’s 124th Commencement, the have been absolutely spectacular. annual Holroyd Lecture, some awards 6 GEORGE WASHINGTON AND presented by the Urban Studies Center, THE CONSTITUTION and other campus activities. How helpful was our first president in 24 ALUMNI NEWS shaping the document that created a A chronicle of some significant events in nation? the lives of the university’s alumni plus a 10 BUILDING INTERNATIONAL pictorial report on Homecoming Weekend. EDUCATIONAL BRIDGES CREDITS: Front Cover by Martha Ledger; back Brothers from six different countries have cover, The White House; pages 1 , 12, 19, 20, 21 come to La Salle to study, teach, or do (far right), 23, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31 (top), 32 (left), research. Kelly & Massa; 3, Charles F. Sibre; 4, David V. 13 THE SECRETARY’S “ENFORCER” Mengle; 6, Pennsylvania Academy of The Fine Arts; 13, Department of Health & Human Ser Tom Burke, ’60, has been keeping things vices; 29, Jules Schick; all others by Ledger. moving at the Department of Health and Human Services. 15 FINALS! Front Cover: La Salle’s 124th Com mencement at Philadelphia’s Civic Thousands of La Salle students endured Center—Convention Hall. this traditional ritual captured by the photographs of Martha Ledger. Back Cover: Thomas R. Burke, ’60 (seat ed at left) joins Otis R. Bowen, M.D., 19 AROUND CAMPUS Secretary of Health and Human Ser La Salle’s MBA Program celebrated its vices, and Surgeon General C. Everett tenth anniversary and Four Quarters has Koop on the dias with President Ronald Reagan at a recent dinner in Washing been reborn. Also: reports on the ton. Robert S. Lyons, Jr., '61, Editor James J. McDonald, ’58, Alumni Director ALUMNI ASSOCIATION OFFICERS John J. French, ’53, President Stephen L. McGonigle, '72, Executive Vice President John Fleming, '70, Vice President Lynn Piatkowski, ’82, Secretary A Historical Debate, Page 6 Joseph L. Patti, ’50, Treasurer 50th Reunion, Page 29 La Salle Magazine is published quarterly by La Salle University. Philadelphia. Penna. 19141. for the alumni, students, faculty and friends of the University. Editorial and business offices located at the News Bureau, La Salle University. Philadelphia, Penna. 19141. Second class postage paid at Philadelphia. Penna. Changes of address should be sent at least 30 days prior to publication of the issue with which it is to take effect, to the Alumni Office. La Salle University. Final Exams, Page 15 Philadelphia. Penna. 19141. Postmaster: send change of address to office listed above. Member of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). THE HONORS PROGRAM For 25 years, La Salle has been quietly turning out some of the top scholars in the nation By Robert S. Lyons, Jr. Honors Program members who won departmental academic awards this year pose with John Grady (standing, third from right). Standing (from left): Chris Combs, Pauline Scalvino, Ed Skorpinski, Ed Buchanan, Grady, Mike Dennis, and Jim Kennedy. Seated (from left): Liz Vrato, Lisa Dankanich, Cathy Decker, Sue Kennedy, and Penny Hoskins. Back in the 1960s, Jim Butler, a brilliant, young ‘What shall I do?’ ’’ recalls Brother Patrick, who is honors student at La Salle, did a paper on the contem now the president of La Salle. “Tell them the plain porary poet Ferlinghetti and sent it off to Renascence, truth,’’ I replied. “They’d be too embarrassed not to a highly-respected journal. The editors wrote back publish it. Furthermore, that will be a great thing in saying, “. Dear Professor Butler . We should like your fellowship application.’’ to publish your article, but you haven’t given us your Butler told the truth, won Danforth and Woodrow academic rank or the origin of your degrees. We need Wilson Fellowships, and solidified his reputation as this information to accompany your article before we one of the most talented pioneers in La Salle's Honors can publish it. ” Butler went to one of his English Program. Today, Dr. James A. Butler is the chairman professors, Brother Patrick Ellis, who had just taken of La Salle University’s English Department. over as director of La Salle’s Honors Center. “He said La Salle’s Honors Program, one of the most respect- La Salle, Summer 1987 1 H O N O R S —continued La Salle students are now turning down some of the best graduate schools ed academic enterprises of its type in the nation, is averaged about 40 graduate and professional school commemorating its 25th birthday this year in fine fellowships, scholarships, and assistantships. style. “Our (honors) students can hold their heads up “In the 18 years I’ve been here, I am hard pressed second to none,” says Brother President Patrick Ellis, to recall a class that was as universally as good in F.S.C., Ph.D., the first full-time director of the pro terms of academic outcomes as this one,” said John gram who ran it from 1964 until he was appointed Grady, the longtime director of the program. “Our director of development in 1969. Actually, the Honors students are doing very well, thank you. In fact, in Program at La Salle has only had three directors and many cases they have been absolutely spectacular.” two of them went on to become presidents of the Sitting in his office in the lower level of McShain university. Brother Daniel Burke, F.S.C., Ph.D., who Hall, Grady reminisced about people like Jim Butler, got it off the ground in 1961-62, eventually became La ’67, and listed some of the accomplishments of recent Salle’s academic vice president and served as presi Honors Program graduates: Danforth, Truman, Ful- dent from 1969 to 1978. “We were one of the first,” bright, and Woodrow Wilson Scholars . Accep says Grady. “If Daniel Burke wasn’t ahead of his tances to Law Schools like Harvard, Yale, Chicago, time, he was certainly at the cutting edge.” Grady, and Virginia . Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and the who succeeded Brother Patrick in 1969, has served in University of Pennsylvania Medical Schools . Fel a number of leadership roles in the National Col lowships to Dickinson, Columbia, Cornell, Stanford legiate Honors Council. He conducts annual work and Berkley. “Our students are now turning down shops and frequently consults other colleges and uni some of the best schools,” added Grady, “schools like versities thinking about starting their own programs. Yale, Chicago, Notre Dame, and Duke.” Villanova’s program, for example, is a “direct copy” of La Salle’s. Grady has advised St. Joseph’s Univer G rady takes particular pleasure in talking about sity which is currently attempting to resurrect its pro students like Sue Kennedy, '87, a graduate of Phila gram. delphia’s Northeast High School who scored a perfect Brother Burke traces the actual planting of the seed (800) on her Graduate Record Exam, finished in the for the Honors Program back to the late ’50s, shortly 99th percentile in the Law School Admissions Test, after he joined La Salle’s English Department as a and is headed to the University of Virginia’s com young professor fresh out of the Ph.D. Program at The bined Law School and Graduate Program in Eco Catholic University and a teaching stint at Manhattan nomics. Both of Kennedy’s parents are dead. The College. youngest of four girls, Sue is the first to have com “Maybe a year or so after I came in 1957, we started pleted college. “What she has accomplished—the jobs an Academic Development Committee,” he recalled. she worked just to pay her room and board, just to “The general notion was to improve the academic get through here—is absolutely incredible,” says spirit, the ambience, to make our programs more Grady. challenging. I’m not sure if a recommendation for an La Salle’s Honors Program is now recognized as one Honors Program came out of that committee, but if of the nation’s finest. The Newsletter of the National it didn’t, it was in the spirit of the effort of that com Collegiate Honors Council, for example, has de mittee—something to raise the academic level of pro scribed it as “a very special sort not available to grams, to do something for a group that we obviously larger, general universities,” and took note of a “real had, a group of especially talented students.” ly extraordinary record in terms of garnering Fulbright, Danforth, and Marshall scholarships.” B y 1962, Brother Burke was asking the Roster Office Extraordinary to be sure. Men and women from La to divert obviously gifted students into special sec Salle have won just about every graduate award in tions. A footnote for an English Department course cluding a Harry Truman Scholarship, Marshall and actually appeared in the college’s catalogues around Rotary International Fellowships, and National Sci that time that said: “This course is required to those ence Foundation Grants.