People: Former NSF Director Massey Returns To His Alma Mater, Atlanta's Morehouse College, As School's New President

Morehouse College, As Institution's New President Author: Franklin Hoke Former National Science Foundation director Walter E. Massey, 57, became president of Morehouse College in Atlanta on August 12. Morehouse, founded in 1867, just after the Civil War, is a historically black, all-male, four-year liberal arts college of about 3,000 students. Well-known alumni include Martin Luther King, Jr. and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan. GOING HOME: After years as a national science-policy figure, Walter E. Massey now wants to work at the "grass-roots level" at Morehouse College. Massey, the college's ninth president and an alumnus of the school, is a physicist who has held a number of top academic and research administration posts in addition to heading NSF from 1991 to 1993. These include vice president for research at the University of Chicago from 1984 to 1991 and, just prior his return to Morehouse, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs for the University of California system. After viewing science and science education from a policymaker's perspective for many years, Massey says he now hopes to renew his campus-level involvements. "At this point in my career, I wanted to get back to an environment where I have more direct contacts with students and faculty," he reports. "I don't want to make a commitment, especially this first year, but the opportunity to go back into the classroom is something that appeals to me. I've been involved in programs around the country, at the national level, to try to promote more opportunities for minorities in science and to encourage minority youngsters to pursue science, and I decided that I should go back and get more involved at a grass-roots level. "Also, given the role that race plays in national policies, returning to an institution that has played a major role over the years in civil rights and equal opportunity issues is going to present me with an opportunity, perhaps, to have some influence there." Massey expects that his years as a national figure in science should help him to provide Morehouse with valuable educational links to the research community. "As I've told all my friends in the national labs and the major research universities, I intend to call in quite a few chits, in the sense of trying to establish opportunities for partnerships with Morehouse faculty and students," Massey notes. "One of the problems with small colleges is that faculty can find it difficult to keep up in research themselves, and one of the things I want to try to open up is the chance for our faculty to have research leaves and research opportunities at various institutions at the forefront of their fields. "I would also like scientists who are at major research institutions to come and spend visits, short-term or more extended, through lectureships or professorships, at the college. That way, students can have a chance to see, close up and first-hand, and perhaps have an opportunity to work with some of the nation's leading scientists." He adds that the fact that Morehouse is a liberal arts college provides him with a further science-education challenge: "Beyond simply encouraging more people to go into science as a career, I would like to try to affect the science literacy of people no matter which careers they're going to go into. I want to try to promote a better understanding of science by artists, musicians, humanists, and the like." Massey earned a B.S. in physics and mathematics from Morehouse in 1958 and was a physics instructor at Morehouse in 1958 and 1959. In 1966, he was awarded M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from Washington University in St. Louis. He was a postdoctoral research associate and staff physicist at Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Ill., from 1966 to 1968. From 1968 to 1970, he was an assistant professor of physics at the University of Illinois. In 1970, he went to Brown University as an associate professor, becoming a full professor and dean of the college from 1975 to 1979. From 1979 to 1984, he returned to Argonne as director of the laboratory. Argonne is managed by the University of Chicago, and Massey was vice president for research and for Argonne from 1984 to 1991, when he became NSF director. He also held the post of professor of physics at Chicago from 1979 to 1993. --- Franklin Hoke (The Scientist, Vol:9, #16, pg.14 , August 21, 1995) (Copyright © The Scientist, Inc.)

People: Former NSF Director Massey Returns To His Alma Mater, Atlanta's Morehouse College, As School's New President

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