• Geology department revisited
• Myers Hall legends continue
• Polis House provides for more discussion
• Valentine's Day card rekindles memories
• Alumnus applauds media coverage

Geology department revisited

Editor's Note: In researching the department of geology, we discovered that students were studying geology well before it became a formal department during Nave’s tenure. Our apologies for the confusion.

This is to call to your attention a very serious error in the history of Wittenberg University as found on page 8 of the Winter 2000 edition of the Wittenberg Magazine.

The second paragraph of the article titled “Geology department remembers founder” declares that Dr. Floyd R. Nave “founded the department in 1953 in the attic of Carnegie Hall and watched it grow until his retirement in 1988.” The paragraph says that “Nave was considered the ‘Father of the Geology Department.’”

This simply cannot be true! I entered Wittenberg in the fall of 1948 in the freshmen class and chose geology as my science study. I completed a full year of first-year four-hour geology in the 1948-49 academic year and later devoted a semester's study to geomorphology.

So, the department was a full-fledged part of the academic menu not only during my freshman year but during the four years of my academic residence at Wittenberg, which led to a B.A. in June of 1952 before moving on to Maywood Seminary near Chicago.

The head of the geology department during the time I was reading geology was Lincoln Stewart, Ph.D., whom I shall always fondly remember as a stern academic disciplinarian who could also be compassionate and understanding of individual students. Dr. Stewart's picture is presently before me in the 1949 edition of the Wittenberger, Vol 33, in the lab of the department in Carnegie Hall.

Other pictures can be found of him in subsequent editions. Thus, although Dr. Nave I'm sure was an excellent and much beloved teacher, he definitely cannot be called the founder of the geology department it just is not so! I don’t know who “founded” the department, but I do know that Dr. Stewart held the chair during the time I was a resident at Wittenberg.

In the interest of accuracy, this matter should be corrected in the history of the university and in the Wittenberg Magazine.

The Rev. Ronald F. Fuller ’52