Vol. 19, No. 14

Dec. 9, 1999

Emeritus faculty member
establishes fellowship

Members of the Department of English, supporters and friends will gather Tuesday, Dec. 14, for a reception to announce the Rosenberry Undergraduate Teaching Fellowship and to honor the man who created it, Edward H. Rosenberry, professor emeritus of English. Rosenberry, who retired in 1979, chaired the English Department from 1966-69 and served as acting dean of the College of Arts and Science in 1973. In those roles, he hired many of the people who are now senior members of the English Department, including current chairperson Jerry Beasley. Throughout his retirement Rosenberry has retained close ties to the department and in 1989 established the Edward H. Rosenberry Undergraduate Writing Award, which is given to six students for excellence in writing each year at Honors Day. The goal of the writing award is to increase faculty and student awareness that good writing matters and that it matters to everyone. The new Rosenberry Undergraduate Teaching Fellowship was established to promote undergraduate instruction, especially in those classes offered during the freshman and sophomore years, with an emphasis on writing. It carries a stipend of $2,000 and will be awarded every other year. Funds are to be used to develop a new course or enrich an existing one. Tenured and tenure-track faculty in the English department may apply. Applications are due Feb. 15, and the award will be announced on or about March 1. The new or enriched course must be offered no later than the fall semester, immediately after the year of the award. "The gravitation of our scholarship at the University has been uphill. It's gone toward upper-level courses and graduate degrees," Rosenberry said in explaining why he established the fellowship. "I think we need to try to balance this and put a little more emphasis on beginning instruction. "The English department does a good job of maintaining small freshman classes, but most of them are assigned to graduate teaching assistants. That's good for them as far as formal professional experience, but I would like to see the faculty take a more hands-on roll in the education of freshman," he said. "We established the fellowship to strengthen this and to encourage faculty participation and planning of exciting courses," Rosenberry continued. "When I retired in 1979 and became the old man on the hill, I was given carte blanche to teaching any course I wanted," Rosenberry recalled. "Among my selections was one course of freshman English. Everyone was astounded. No full professor had ever made that choice before. Now, when I am at the point of closing out my career, I hope that by throwing a little money at the problem I can make a difference." "The department is just delighted with this latest award from Ed," Beasley said. "This is a very meaningful contribution, and we are grateful for the opportunity it gives us to emphasize and promote writing instruction. Ed is truly a gentleman in the most fundamental sense, and we're proud that he still considers UD his intellectual and academic home." Rosenberry, who lives in Hockessin with his wife, Betty, joined the UD faculty in 1952. Before that, he taught at the high school level and at Kutztown State College and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1987, he received the University's Medal of Distinction, the highest non-degree award presented by the University to recognize significant professional achievements and public service contributions. UD also honored him for teaching excellence in 1963. Other responsibilities at UD included stints as director of freshman English and director of a National Defense Education Act Summer Institute for English teachers. The author of numerous critical essays on American authors, he wrote two books on Herman Melville, Melville and the Comic Spirit and Melville. A graduate of Haverford College, he earned his master's degree from Columbia University and his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. While serving in the U.S. Army from 1942-46, he was director of the Philippine Institute for the Armed Forces. Since his retirement, Rosenberry has remained active in the community, lecturing and writing. He is a member of the University of Delaware Association of Retired Faculty and has edited its newsletter. About every 10 years, a newspaper article appears highlighting his activities. A 1972, Newark Weekly Post article lauded his efforts to initiate one of the University's first interdisciplinary courses- "English Literature of the Sea." The course, which combined literature, art, music and film, was offered to undergraduate and graduate students through the College of Marine Studies. In 1986, an article in the Wilmington Morning News detailed his search for the world's oldest book and his research on a Syriac Codex of a 350-page 5th-century Bible, discovered in Egypt in 1892. In 1998, an UpDate article told of his efforts to bring fellow retirees from Cokesbury Village to Gore Hall for a lesson on teaching and technology. -Beth Thomas