Fourteen retiring faculty members were recognized during Vanderbilt’s May 11 commencement ceremony when the university honored their years of service and bestowed on them the title of emeritus or emerita faculty.
Royal G. Albridge, Ph.D., Professor of Physics, Emeritus
Royal G. Albridge received his Bachelor of Science from Ohio State University in 1955 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1960. After service in the Air Force analyzing debris from Soviet atomic bomb tests, he joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 1961. Albridge remained at Vanderbilt for the next 46 years, establishing the university’s first program in photoelectron spectroscopy. He directed the Vanderbilt Physics National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates summer program for four years, served as secretary of the Faculty Senate, chair of the University Committee on Religious Affairs and chair of the University External Affairs Council. Albridge served for 24 years as an on-site accreditation evaluator for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and became a licensed psychological examiner in 1980. He served for several years as a counselor at the Vanderbilt Psychological and Counseling Center.
Jimmy L. Davidson, Ph.D., Professor of Electrical Engineering, Emeritus; Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Emeritus; Professor of Engineering Management, Emeritus
Jimmy Davidson received a Bachelor of Arts in 1962 from Hendrix College, and his Master of Science (1965) and Ph.D. (1967) from Columbia University. He worked at Harris Semiconductor, Inc. until 1980, when he helped found Insouth Microsystems, Inc. From 1984 to 1989, he was an associate professor of electrical engineering at Auburn University. Davidson joined the Vanderbilt faculty in September 1989 as a professor of electrical engineering, professor of materials science and engineering and professor of management of technology, and as the director of the Vanderbilt Microelectronics Laboratory. He is internationally recognized for the research programs he developed in the areas of diamond and nano-carbon films. In 1999, he was presented with the Tau Beta Pi award for excellence in teaching. From 2003 to 2006, he chaired the School of Engineering Research Council. He is a fellow of the Electrochemical Society and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Stephen S. Entman, M.D., Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Emeritus
Stephen S. Entman received his Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from Harvard College, and M.D. from Duke University. Following military service and three years of private practice, Entman joined the faculty of the University of South Carolina. In 1980, he was recruited to Vanderbilt. He served as chair of the department from 1995 to 2005. He was the principal investigator for a National Institutes of Health grant to investigate pre-eclamptic pregnancy and for a March of Dimes grant for a demonstration project to prevent preterm birth. Entman chaired the Medical Center Medical Board for five consecutive terms from 1989 to 1994 and was chair of the Maternal Mortality Collaborative of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists for 15 years, during which time he was a consultant to the Centers for Disease Control. He was honored with the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Duke University in 1996.
Jeffery J. Franks, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Emeritus
Jeffery J. Franks was among the first cognitive psychologists hired by the Psychology Department when he arrived at Vanderbilt in 1970 after earning his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. A consistent theme throughout Franks’ work has been the attempt to outline the general structure of the human memory system. He has also made significant contributions to the application of cognitive psychology to educational contexts. Franks has taught the introductory statistics class that is required of undergraduate psychology majors. In this role, he has made fundamental data-analytic techniques accessible to students who often lack a substantial background in mathematics. In addition, he has taught several well-received undergraduate seminars on topics such as cognition, consciousness and the self, and Buddhist psychology that are appealing to undergraduates yet require a rigorous scientific treatment. Franks has also been an adviser to a cadre of graduate students who have gone on to productive careers.
Thomas P. Graham Jr., M.D., Professor of Pediatrics, Emeritus
Thomas P. Graham Jr. received both his undergraduate (1959) and his medical degrees (1963) from Duke University. Following a pediatric residency at Boston Children’s Hospital, a pediatric cardiology fellowship at Duke University and postdoctoral experimental training in cardiovascular physiology at the National Institutes of Health, Graham joined the Vanderbilt faculty as the director of the Division of Pediatric Cardiology in 1971. He was honored with the Ann and Monroe Carell Family Chair in 1975. Graham has also been honored as the Alexander Nadas lecturer at the American Heart Association (AHA) and with the Gifted Teacher Award of the American College of Cardiology (ACC). He has served as chair of the Pediatric Cardiology Sub-board of the American Board of Pediatrics, chair of the Council on Cardiovascular Disease in the Young of the AHA, chair of the Congenital Heart Disease Committee of the ACC and president of the International Society of Congenital Heart Disease.
Donald J. Hall, J.D., Professor of Law, Emeritus
Donald J. Hall joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 1970 after earning a J.D. from the University of Florida Law School in 1968. He served as associate dean of the Vanderbilt Law School from 1979 through 1984. Hall was one of the two inaugural recipients of the Vanderbilt Chair of Teaching Excellence in 1994. He was selected nine times by the law school student body to receive the school’s outstanding teacher award, which was renamed for him in 2005. He is the co-author of Criminal Procedure: The Post-Investigative Process, widely used in law schools. In 1990, Hall was the inaugural recipient of the Tennessee Bar Association Outstanding Law Professor Award. He served as co-chair of the State Supreme Court’s Commission on Gender Fairness and helped shape the state’s revised penal code as a member of the Tennessee Sentencing Commission. Hall was appointed by the governor as one of the first six members of the Tennessee Ethics Commission.
John Halperin, Ph.D., Centennial Professor of English, Emeritus
John Halperin received his Bachelor of Arts from Bowdoin College in 1963 and a Ph.D. in 1969 from The Johns Hopkins University. Halperin has been Centennial Professor of English at Vanderbilt since 1983. In 1996, he was given the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award by the College of Arts and Science and, in 2002, the Outstanding Educator Award by Peabody College. Halperin has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, as well as fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Vanderbilt Research Council. He is an honorary fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, and since 1985 has been one of the few Americans elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Halperin’s major publications include Trollope and Politics; Gissing: A Life in Books ; C.P. Snow: An Oral Biography; The Life of Jane Austen; Jane Austen’s Lovers; Novelists in Their Youth; and Eminent Georgians.
David M. Hercules, Ph.D., Centennial Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus
David Hercules received his Bachelor of Science in chemistry at Juniata College and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He held appointments on the faculty at Lehigh, Juniata, MIT, Georgia and Pittsburgh before coming to Vanderbilt as Centennial Professor of Chemistry in 1995. Hercules was chair of the Chemistry Department from 1995 to 2003. He pioneered analytical protocols using electron spectroscopy. A world-renowned expert in analytical chemistry, he served as the chairman of the Analytical Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS). Hercules has received both the Analytical Chemistry Award and the Surface Science Award from the ACS. He was a Guggenheim Memorial Fellow, a winner of the Alexander von Humboldt Prize and a recipient of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy’s Lester Strock Medal. At Vanderbilt, he won the University Distinguished Faculty Award in 2003 and the Earl Sutherland Prize for Achievement in Research in 2002.
Peter T. Loosen, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus
Peter Loosen, a native of Germany, trained as a medical student at the Universities of Tübingen and Munich. He completed his psychiatry residency and a Ph.D. thesis in neurochemistry at the University of Munich in 1974. He moved to the United States in 1975 to work as a research fellow at the University of North Carolina and subsequently completed a second psychiatry residency program at UNC from 1976 to 1979. Loosen arrived at Vanderbilt in May 1986 as a professor of psychiatry, chief of the Division of Psychoneuroendocrinology, and chief of psychiatry at the Nashville Veterans Administration Medical Center. His primary research activities focused on the relationships between hormones and behavior. His investigation of psychiatric phenomenology in patients with acute Cushing’s disease confirmed that hypercortisolism produces depression and anxiety. Loosen published 150 scientific peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and is the co-editor of two books, Handbook of Clinical Psychoneuroendocrinology and Current Psychiatric Diagnosis and Treatment.
Thomas R. McCoy, J.D., LL.M., Professor of Law, Emeritus
Thomas R. McCoy has been a member of the Vanderbilt University Law School faculty for 39 years. Following receipt of his J.D. from the University of Cincinnati, McCoy earned an LL.M. at Harvard Law School in 1968, and then joined the Vanderbilt faculty. He served as associate dean from 1971 through 1975. He was appointed to the Tarkington Chair of Teaching Excellence in 2003 and served as faculty adviser to the Moot Court Board for 12 years. McCoy’s primary focus has been constitutional law, particularly the First Amendment. He directed the renovation and expansion of the Law School building in 1982 and again in 2001, and served nine years as a member of the planning commission for the City of Brentwood. McCoy also served on the Tennessee Bar Association’s Committee on Alternative Dispute Resolution and on the Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee for the U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee.
James Loren Nash, M.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus
After completing his degrees and residency at Duke University, James Nash served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal. Following a stint as a faculty member at Duke, Nash joined the faculty of the Vanderbilt University Department of Psychiatry in 1980. He is a four-time winner of the Psychiatry Residency Training Program Excellence in Teaching Award and a recipient of the American Psychiatric Association Irma Bland Award for Sustained Excellence in Teaching Residents. He served for eight years as vice chair for graduate medical education and director of residency training, and was the medical director of the Vanderbilt Community Mental Health Center (Adult Section) for 14 years. Nash is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, past president of the Tennessee Psychiatric Association, past president and sustaining fellow of the Southern Psychiatric Association, a fellow of the American College of Psychoanalysts, the first president of the North Carolina Psychoanalytic Society and a founding member of the Nashville Psychoanalytic Study Group.
F. Carter Philips, Ph.D., Professor of Classics, Emeritus
F. Carter Philips graduated from Vanderbilt in 1965. He returned to the university in 1969 as a specialist in Greek literature and papyrology, the study of ancient documents preserved on papyrus. He has taught Greek language, literature and civilization to students at all levels. He has served as department chair for 10 years and as associate dean for academic programs for four years. He served several years on the Lionel Pearson Fellowship Committee and more than seven years on similar committees of the Classical Association of the Midwest and South. Philips served terms as both vice president and president of Phi Beta Kappa, the Alpha Chapter of Tennessee. Nearly a generation of Vanderbilt alumni remember Philips as the University Marshal, leading the procession to the graduation ceremonies. He approved every aspect of the event, from the arrangement of the chairs to the sound of the musicians who accompanied the procession.
Henry A. Teloh, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus
Henry Teloh has been a faculty member in the Vanderbilt University Department of Philosophy for 35 years. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1972, joining the Vanderbilt faculty immediately after. Teloh is the author of two books on Plato’s philosophy, The Development of Plato’s Metaphysics and Socratic Education in Plato’s Early Dialogues, and has another work, Rhetoric in Plato’s ‘Gorgious’ and ‘Phaedrus’ under consideration for publication. He has published articles in The Journal of the History of Philosophy, Phronesis, Apeiron, The Canadian Journal of Philosophy and The Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy. Teloh has taught a wide variety of courses from “Introduction to Ethics” to graduate courses in Plato and working groups in the Greek language. In recent years, he has been in much demand for his teaching in the M.L.A.S. program. In 2001, he served as acting chair of the Department of Philosophy.
Susan Ford Wiltshire, Ph.D., Professor of Classics, Emerita
Susan Ford Wiltshire has been an active member of the Vanderbilt University Department of Classical Studies since 1971 as an expert in Roman poetry. Wiltshire served in the Department of Classical Studies as chair for nine years and was also chair of the Faculty Council of the College of Arts and Science. She was instrumental in starting the Vanderbilt Women’s Studies Program and taught its first course in the 1970s. She helped start WEAV (Women in Education At Vanderbilt), the first advocacy group for female faculty at Vanderbilt. Wiltshire received the Madison Sarratt Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the Thomas Jefferson Award, the Alumni Education Award, The Chancellor’s Cup and the Mary Jane Werthan Award. She has been the president of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, and in 1997, President Clinton appointed Wiltshire to a six-year term on the National Council on the Humanities.
Media Contact: Melissa Pankake, (615) 322-2706
melissa.r.pankake@vanderbilt.edu