• The college has become the home to two programs for non-traditional students—the Parallel Program, for undergraduates to begin their studies in a different setting from the Newark campus, and the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program, which allows returning adult students to earn a terminal master’s degree. The MALS program graduated its first two students in 1991; last May, 14 graduated.

• Barbara T. Gates, Alumni Distinguished Professor of English and Women’s Studies, has received the Founders Distinguished Senior Scholar Award from the American Association of University Women (AAUW) Educational Foundation, recognizing a tenured woman at the pinnacle of her academic career for a lifetime of outstanding teaching, publication and impact on women in her profession and community.

• The music department created a master’s degree program in 1990, the only graduate music program in the state, and in March 2000 created a minor in church music. The department’s Interactive Videodisc series has been adopted by more than 1,000 colleges and universities around the world for use in teaching music history and literature.

• The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry created the doctoral-level Chemistry/Biology Interface Program in 1994 and implemented a bachelor’s degree program in biochemistry in 1995. Also, the department’s new bachelor’s degree program in environmental chemistry was the first in the country to be certified by the American Chemical Society. The department ranks in the National Science Foundation’s top-10 list for the number of bachelor’s degree graduates who go on to earn Ph.D.s.

• The Winterthur/UD Program in Art Conservation, one of only three such programs in the country, was selected in 1998 as an Official Project of the Save America’s Treasures Program, a public-private partnership between the White House Millennium Council and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In the past 10 years, the program has received a series of important and major grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Getty Grant Program and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

• The Army ROTC program in 1999-2000 was ranked No. 10 in the nation among 270 ROTC programs, its highest viability ranking in its 111-year history. Also last year, Capt. John Casper received the Leo Codd Memorial Award as the nation’s top ROTC instructor.

• The Byron Society Collection, established in 1995 by a UD graduate, was acquired by the University in October 1999 and is housed in the English department. The collection is an archive of books, photographs, correspondence and other material items that relate to the poet and his literary and cultural influences. An international Byron Conference was sponsored this August by the Byron Society of America and UD.

• Bayard Sharp Hall, Pearson Hall, Memorial Hall, Brown Laboratory and Elliott Hall underwent major renovations. Monroe Hall was newly constructed.
• The Professional Theatre Training Program graduated its first UD class in 1992 and now is a nationally renowned program listed by U.S. News & World Report as among the top 10 graduate theatre training programs in the nation.

• In 2000, the Center for American Material Culture Studies was established, with Bernard Herman, Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg Professor of Art History, its first director.

• The art history department’s biennial Delaware Symposia on American Art, the oldest permanent forum for new research in American art history in the nation, included such topics as The African-American Experience in 20th Century American Art (1993) and Tradition and Innovation in American Art (1999).

• An academic major in women’s studies was established in 1993. A two-day national conference was held in 1994 to highlight the 20-year anniversary of women’s studies at UD.

• The Bartol Research Institute became part of the college in July 2000.

• The physical therapy program awarded its first master’s degrees in 1991 and was granted departmental status the next year. In 1994, the department opened a full-service clinic that has evolved into the premier outpatient physical therapy clinic in the Delaware Valley.

• In October 1998, the University and the Department of Computer and Information Sciences hosted DSOM ’98, the ninth annual international conference on distributed systems: operations and management. Cosponsored by the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society and the International Federation for Information Processing, it was the first international event in the field of computer networks to be held at UD.

• The English department hosted the ninth annual Virginia Woolf Conference.

• In 1996, the Department of Philosophy instituted the David Norton Memorial Lecture Series, which attracts a nationally known speaker annually.

• Since 1995, three college alumni have won Pulitzer Prizes for reporting.