Living Deans of the College of Arts and Science
Armon Yanders, Richard Wallace, Milton Glick, Larry Clark, Richard Schwartz
During this centennial year, the College of Arts and Science
honors its five living deans with
Distinguished Service Awards.
Yanders graduated from Peru State College in Nebraska (where his grandfather was president) with a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1948. Evelyn, a fellow graduate, became his bride in August of that year. After receiving a doctorate in genetics from the University of Nebraska in 1953, he spent 18 months at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Tennessee) and Northwestern University studying the genetic effects of atomic and nuclear radiation.
In 1954, Yanders enlisted in the Navy and completed Naval Officer Candidate School; he chose the pilot pipeline, and after flight training spent three years at the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory in San Francisco. He completed active duty in 1958 but continued to serve in the Navy Ready Reserve for 30 more years before retiring as a captain in 1988.
The family moved to Michigan State University in 1959, where Yanders taught genetics and studied the mutagenic effects of radiation and certain chemicals.
In 1969 Yanders left Michigan State to become dean of the College of Arts and Science at MU. He left the dean’s office in 1982 and became director of the Environmental Trace Substances Research Center and the Sinclair Comparative Medicine Research Farm. That position led to his being appointed in 1985 as a member of the U.S. Veterans Administration Advisory Committee on Environmental Hazards. This committee advised the Secretary of Veterans Affairs on matters related to the exposure of military personnel to ionizing radiation and dioxin. During his 17 years of service on the committee, the last 10 of which were as its chairman, he was called on to testify before Congress on the activities and recommendations of the committee. Yanders retired in 1994 but stayed on as director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Program and the Spinal Cord Injuries Research Program.
He and Evelyn are actively involved in University events, and they like to travel as frequently as they can. The couple’s older son died in 1997; their younger son, his wife, and two children live in western Missouri. The Yanders enjoy living near enough so that they can exchange visits often. [top]
Wallace graduated from Northwestern University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and went on to Vanderbilt University where he earned his doctorate in economics.
After a short stint at Florida State University, Wallace’s long career at MU began as an assistant professor and department chair of economics and assistant professor of community health and medical practice in 1966. He currently is a professor of economics and a member of the graduate faculty. His research and teaching interests are related principally to public-utility regulation and health economics.
From 1972 to 1974 Wallace was assistant dean for research for the School of Business and Public Administration; he served as associate dean and interim dean of the Graduate School through 1982.
Wallace was then asked to serve as interim dean of Arts and Science, where he developed a computer-based information system and wrote the first draft of an academic plan for the College. He was associate provost for the campus from 1983 to 1985 before becoming associate vice president, then vice president, for academic affairs from 1985 to 1997 for the University of Missouri System.
Wallace served as interim chancellor before becoming chancellor of MU in 1997. He retired from that position in 2004.
Wallace and his wife Patricia have been married 50 years; they met in ninth grade in Paducah, Ky. Patricia was a teacher and has directed Columbia Mothersingers for 40 years. They have two daughters who live in western Missouri: one is a lawyer, and the other is an assistant band director and music teacher. Both daughters and the Wallaces’ son-in-law are graduates of the University. The Wallaces’ grandson is attending school in California, and their granddaughter is a sophomore in high school. The Wallaces’ 10-year-old Shih Tzu makes their family complete. [top]
Glick was born in Memphis, Tenn., and grew up in Rock Island, Ill., along the Mississippi River. His family had a jewelry store across the river in Davenport, Iowa. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Augustana College in Rock Island in 1959, he went on to earn his doctorate in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, in 1965.
Following a year of postdoctoral studies at Cornell University, he joined the chemistry faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit. He remained at Wayne State for 17 years and during that time became a leader of the faculty senate. In his final five years at Wayne State he was chair of the chemistry department. Glick was a noted researcher in the field of X-ray crystallography. His work was funded for 17 consecutive years by the National Science Foundation, and he published 99 research articles during that period.
From 1983 to 1988, as dean of Arts and Science at MU, Glick was responsible for many advances, including a writing-across-the-curriculum program that became a model for other universities. He attracted considerable attention by placing a networked computer in the office of every faculty member of the College, a revolutionary idea at the time.
Glick left MU in 1988 to become provost at Iowa State University, moving a few years later to become provost at Arizona State University. During his tenure at ASU, the Tempe campus became the largest in the United States in terms of enrollment, and the number of National Merit Scholars rose from about a dozen to more than 500. Funding for sponsored research tripled, and ASU recruited 10 faculty with prestigious national academy memberships and one Nobel Laureate. A fundraising campaign announced with a goal of $300 million exceeded that goal by more than $200 million. As of August 2006, Glick is president of the University of Nevada, Reno.
Glick has been a technology consultant to colleges and universities and is a senior fellow of the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, which conducts research on the roles and implications of information technology in higher education. He describes himself as both a technophile and “technoskeptic” — optimistic about the possibilities of technology but pessimistic about whether higher education will learn to use technology effectively.
He and his wife of more than 40 years, Peggy, a former high school math teacher and financial analyst, are the parents of two sons — one, a senior manager of software development for amazon.com; and the other, an economic consultant who specializes in postal ratesetting. The Glicks have two grandchildren. [top]
Following the departure of Milton Glick as dean, Clark was named interim dean on July 1, 1988. The “interim” was removed from the title on All Fools’ Day, 1989, and he retired on September 1, 1998. Like those deans who came before and after him, he worked unflaggingly to protect the integrity of the College as the intellectual leader of the campus. In addition, his tenure marked several important milestones, such as the move of the dean’s office from Jesse Hall to Lowry Hall; the long-overdue special enhancement of the departments of chemistry, history, mathematics and English; the growth of a fledgling development program and the successful solicitation by new development officer Beverly O’Brien and her staff of the first gifts to the College of a million dollars or more; and the strengthening of international ties, especially with the College’s remarkable alumni in South Korea.
Clark’s academic discipline is theatre. He taught classes in acting, directing and history of the American theatre and wrote the popular acting textbook Acting is Believing, now in its ninth edition. On the national level, he was selected by his peers to lead — at different times — all three national associations dedicated to theatre and education in America: The University and College Theatre Association, the American Theatre Association and the American College Theater Festival. For his efforts, the Kennedy Center named him a Fellow of the American Theatre in 1985. He had previously received the Kennedy Center Gold Medallion for his contributions to theatre education at the regional level.
In addition to his tenure as dean of the College of Arts and Science, this native Missourian (Gainesville, Ozark County) also served the campus as associate provost from 1973 to 1983 and as chair of the Department of Speech and Dramatic Art from 1970 to 1973 and of the Department of Theatre from 1986 to 1988. He is also credited with founding the University’s Summer Repertory Theatre in 1969, and he directed in that venue and for the University Theatre a total of 32 plays ranging from Shakespeare to Sam Shepard.
A bit more than 52 years ago, Clark married Yvonne, also a native Missourian. She is a 1976 graduate of the College of Arts and Science and an avid golfer who recently (finally, she says) carded her first hole-in-one at Columbia Country Club. In any spare time left after golf, she enjoys toiling over her lawn and flowerbeds and solving sudoku puzzles, the harder the better. The Clarks have one son, who lives in western Missouri, from where he travels to hospitals and clinics in the central part of the United States as an applications specialist for a major radiological equipment manufacturing company. The couple has three grandchildren. [top]
Richard B. Schwartz was born in Cincinnati. He chronicled his adolescence there in his book The Biggest City in America: A Fifties Boyhood in Ohio. His father was an attorney and, during the war, a special agent in the FBI. He attended the University of Notre Dame and the University of Illinois, where he did his graduate work in English and the history of science. He served two years of active military duty at Fort Knox and as a captain (Armor) teaching literature and philosophy at the United States Military Academy. He then taught for 12 years at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he served as associate dean for the humanities in the graduate school. Next, he taught for 17 years at Georgetown University, where he served as dean of the graduate school and, twice, as interim executive vice president for the main campus. Since 1998 Schwartz has taught at MU, where he also served (1998–2006) as the dean of the College of Arts and Science.
Schwartz began his writing career studying the intellectual and social history of 18th-century England and wrote a tetralogy on Samuel Johnson, including the extremely popular Daily Life in Johnson’s London, which has sold over 10,000 copies and was translated into Japanese. More recently he has written on the culture wars and contemporary-genre fiction, most prominently in his book Nice and Noir: Contemporary American Crime Fiction.
He now devotes the bulk of his time to writing fiction and teaching creative writing in the program at MU, dividing his time between Columbia and St. Louis, where his wife, Judie, directs the Lifelong Learning Institute at Washington University. Their son is associate vice president for campaigns and communications at the University of Rochester. [top]
Arts and Science Deans 1907 - present
1907 - 1921 J.C. Jones
1921 Frederick H. Tisdel (acting)
1922 - 1939 Frederick H. Tisdel
1939 - 1940 Winterton C. Curtis (acting)
1940 - 1946 Winterton C. Curtis
1946 - 1955 Elmer Ellis
1955 - 1969 W.F. English
1969 - 1982 Armon Yanders
1982 - 1983 Richard Wallace (interim)
1983 - 1988 Milton Glick
1988 Larry Clark (interim)
1989 - 1998 Larry Clark
1998 - 2006 Richard Schwartz
2006 - present Michael O'Brien
copyright © 2006 The Curators of the University of Missouri | an equal opportunity/ADA institution
image credit: Muse of Arts and Science - Deborah Huelsbergen, Department of Art
Last modified: 25-Jan-2007