"I know of no better university officer in the country," President William M. Chace said of Frye. "He is a person of deep integrity, intellectual force, and moral stamina. He improves every project he directs and every meeting he joins. And he brings humor and an easy grace to his many deliberations."
The sixty-three-year-old Frye, who returned to his alma mater from the University of Michigan, cited personal reasons for his decision to relinquish the position of provost.
"In 1986, when I was recruited by Jim Laney to come to Emory, it was my intention to come and give five years of service," Frye said. "That intention was related to the avocations I enjoy in the North Georgia mountains--gardening, trout fishing, and being an amateur botanist. I've now given more than twice that service."
The title of chancellor has been little used in Emory's history. In fact, the University has previously had but three, beginning with Bishop Warren Akin Candler in 1914. According to University bylaws, the chancellor serves as an advisor to the trustees, president, and University officers but does not carry administrative duties.
Photo by Ann Borden
THOMAS
J. LAWLEY has been named dean of the Emory
School of Medicine and vice chair of the Emory
University System of Health Care. He filled both positions on an interim
basis in the five months following the resignation of former dean Jeffrey
L. Houpt. Previously, Lawley served as executive associate dean of the School
of Medicine, chair of the Department of Dermatology, and director of the
dermatology section of The
Emory Clinic. He came to Emory from the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) in 1988.
Lawley is credited with revitalizing Emory's Department of Dermatology in the eight years since he arrived at Emory as professor and chair of the department. Its faculty has increased sixfold, NIH funding went from zero to the third highest in the nation among dermatology departments, and among Emory departments it has gained the reputation of being one of the most interdisciplinary.
Lawley's was the first major appointment announced by Michael M. E. Johns, the new executive vice president for health affairs and director of the Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Center. Johns praised Lawley's "experience as a researcher and a builder of research programs" and said his "in-depth understanding of the National Institutes of Health from his own days there will serve the medical school well. . . .
"Widely regarded as both a teacher and clinician, he has taken on increasing responsibilities in the business operations and expansion of the Emory University System of Health Care, assuring our educational missions will mesh well with our response to the changing health care delivery system."
Photo by Annemarie Poyo
JOHNNETTA B. COLE, the dynamic
president of Spelman College, will join the Emory faculty in the fall of
1998. In her decade at the helm of the predominantly black women's college,
Cole transformed it from a struggling, regional institution into a member
of the ranks of solid, mainstream liberal arts colleges. Academic standards
have risen for faculty and students alike, and U.S. News & World
Report ranked the school among the nation's top one hundred for four
of the past five years. The endowment rose from $40 million to $143 million,
and Spelman successfully completed a $114 million capital campaign--the
most ambitious ever for a black college in a single drive.
Cole, an anthropologist, will step down from her Spelman post June 30 and take a one-year sabbatical before joining the Emory faculty and returning to her first love--teaching.
Photo by Kay Hinton
MARJORIE J. SHOSTAK, former adjunct professor of anthropology whose experiences among the !Kung San people in the African desert inspired a book and theatrical production, died October 6, 1996. She was fifty-one.
In the 1970s, Shostak traveled with her husband, Melvin Konner, now Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology, to Africa, where her friendship with a native African woman thirty years her senior became the basis of her 1981 book, Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman. Researching and writing the book required Shostak to master the !Kung language, which is composed of clicking sounds. The book reached the stage of Theater Emory in 1994 as My Heart is Still Shaking. Shostak returned to Africa in 1993, sought out Nisa, and had nearly completed a companion volume, Nisa Revisited, at the time of her death.
--compiled by Andrew W.M. Beierle