Section 6.4 Governors
Although the section’s administrative structure changed dramatically at the annual meeting in 1968, actions taken at the national level 30 years earlier resulted in another change in the section’s governance. Because this change has turned out to be so important for our section, we pause to look at its history. To our knowledge, no such account of the history of MAA governors exists elsewhere.
By 1938 many of the leaders of the national MAA had become concerned about the tenuous relationship between the MAA and its sections, so the Trustees appointed a Committee to Review the Activities of the Association. The Committee reported its findings in the Monthly two years later. The Trustees subsequently accepted the report and discharged the committee with appreciation. Its five recommendations provided the most extensive analysis of the structure and operations of the MAA since its founding in 1915. One of those recommendations replaced the Trustees with the now familiar Board of Governors that administered and controlled all scholarly and scientific activities of the Association.
The Board’s membership was composed of six national officers, a set of six governors elected at large, and a set of 14 governors elected by region. Initially two MAA members with ties to our section were elected governors at large – Arnold Dresden (Swarthmore) and the section’s founder, A. A. Bennett (Brown). The term for governors at large was three years, so two governors were elected annually.
The principal change to this organizational scheme, however, concerned the regional governors. The Committee to Review the Activities of the Association acknowledged the vital role that the MAA sections played. Their report stated, “The Sections are ... vital and active and have a conscious and definite purpose ... [yet] the inter-relation between the Sections and the Association as a central body is tenuous almost to the point of non-existence.” Hence the report recommended the creation of 14 regions, each to elect one governor for a term of two years. Region 3 consisted of four states: Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The first governor elected from the region was Frederick W. Owens, who, as we have seen, had been an active member of the section even after Penn State was formally associated with the Allegheny Section in 1933. His term ran from 1941 to 1943. Owens was succeeded by Arnold Dresden for 1943-1945. The next regional governor, L. L. Dines (Carnegie Institute of Technology), had no ties to our section. His term was 1945-1947.
However, the regional setup turned out to be unnecessarily cumbersome, so in 1945 the Board of Trustees began to phase out the system of regional governors in favor of a system of sectional governors serving three-year terms. The first governor elected from the Philadelphia Section was Emory P. Starke, who, as we have seen, had been an active member of the section from Rutgers. His term ran from July 1, 1947, to June 30, 1950, which overlapped his 1947-1948 term as chairman of the section. The term of the second sectional governor, George E. Raynor, came on the heels of his year as chairman of the Philadelphia Section in 1948-1949. Raynor’s successor, Cletus Oakley, began 11 years after he completed his one-year chairmanship of the Philadelphia Section. Incidentally, A. E. Meder (Rutgers) was elected as the first sectional governor of the newly formed New Jersey Section in 1955.
Table 6.4.1 provides the complete list of sectional governors up to 1980. During the present period of expansion these governors assumed an even greater role in sectional administration as well as serving as liaisons with the national MAA.
| Governor | Institution | Term |
| Emory P. Starke | Rutgers | 1947-1950 |
| George E. Raynor | Lehigh | 1950-1953 |
| Cletus O. Oakley | Haverford | 1953-1956 |
| Nathan J. Fine | Penn | 1956-1959 |
| Albert Wilansky | Lehigh | 1959-1962 |
| Donald W. Western | Franklin &Marshall | 1962-1965 |
| Emil Grosswald | Penn | 1965-1968 |
| Bernard H. Bissinger | Penn State - Middletown | 1968-1971 |
| Willard Baxter | Delaware | 1971-1974 |
| David Rosen | Swarthmore | 1974-1977 |
| Jerry King | Lehigh | 1977-1980 |
Many of these sectional governors have already been profiled for other contributions made to the section. Here we provide sketches of the last two governors in Table 6.4.1 to honor their continuous involvement with the section right on up to the present time.
- David Rosen (1921-2003) was born in New Haven, Connecticut,. He received an A.B. from New York University in 1942 and then two degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in 1949 and a Ph.D. in 1952 (for a dissertation written under Joseph Lehner). Rosen was an assistant instructor at Penn during his last three years of graduate study. In 1955 he accepted a position at Swarthmore College, replacing Arnold Dresden, the former section chair who had just retired. Rosen remained at Swarthmore until his retirement in 1987. He was an NSF faculty fellow in 1961-1962 and a Fulbright Professor in Ireland in 1971-1972. Rosen served the section in two official capacities, as a member of the Executive Committee 1960- 1963 and as governor 1974-1977. His volunteer activity in sectional affairs was inspired by Arnold Dresden; Rosen in turn was responsible for the involvement of Jerry Porter. Rosen resides in Swarthmore. Although he continues to play the bass in the college orchestra, he is no longer able to play his favorite sport, tennis.
- Jerry Porter King was born in Dyersburg, Tennessee, in 1935. He took all his degrees from the University of Kentucky, a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1958 followed by two degrees in mathematics, an M.S. in 1959 and a Ph.D. in 1962. In Chapter 5 we noted that King’s thesis advisor, V. F. Cowling, taught at Lehigh University from 1949 to 1961 before moving to the University of Kentucky. Jerry King was one of Cowling’s first doctoral students at Kentucky, and Cowling must have retained sufficiently cordial relations with the Lehigh administration, because he recommended his student to the Bethlehem school. The fit was perfect, and King has been at Lehigh since accepting that first position in 1962. Between 1966 and 1984 he produced nine Ph.D. students, two of whom have been active in sectional activities – Frederick (“Fritz”) Hartmann (1968) and Deborah Frantz (1984). King also served in two high-ranking administrative capacities, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences 1979-1981 and dean of the graduate school 1981-1987. In addition, he has served the section in numerous ways: as director of the program of visiting lectures (1974), member of the Executive Committee 1973-1776, director of the program for student speakers (1977), and governor 1977-1980. Besides that, King presented two invited lectures, in 1981 and 1997; he also delivered invited addresses at three other MAA sections: Kentucky in 1981, Allegheny in 1995, and New Jersey in 1997. He resides in Bethlehem.
The 1945 change in the MAA’s by-laws also prescribed that two at-large governors would be elected triennially from the national membership. Four members of the section were elected to those positions up to 1978: Carl B. Allendoerfer (Haverford) 1949-1951, Albert W. Tucker (Princeton) 1953-1956, Heinrich W. Brinkman (Swarthmore) 1955-1957, and Hans Rademacher (Penn) 1962-1964. All four at-large governors were profiled in earlier chapters.
