Continuing the respectful tradition of awarding honorary degrees to exemplary leaders in academia, the Faculty Senate recently announced its call for nominations for honorary degrees.

Judy Brun, chair of the Committee for Honorary Degrees, said the first honorary degree was given in 1877. Issac Roberts, the farm superintendent at Iowa State was awarded an Honorary Master of Agriculture degree.

“Iowa State gave honorary degrees almost at the beginning — since it was founded as a university up through 1958,” Brun said

Brun said that with the exception of President Hilton being awarded a degree in 1965, there were no honorary degrees awarded between 1958 and 1991.

“The program and the idea just sort of ceased to operate. Although lots of other universities around the country were still awarding honorary degrees Iowa State chose not to.”

John Pesek, distinguished professor emeritus of agronomy and member of the committee, said the university has suffered because of the long hiatus in giving honorary degrees.

“Iowa State may have lost out some in recognition by having such a long period when it did not confer any honorary degrees.

“There seemed to be some uncertainty about whether the university was even interested in giving honorary degrees because they had not been granted for so long,” Pesek said.

Brun, who has been chair of the committee since 1992, said the Faculty Senate committee redeveloped a set of operating policies in 1989 and the Committee for Honorary Degrees was first named in 1990. Since then, the committee has awarded eight honorary degrees.

Pesek said the most unique honorary degree given was to George Washington Carver in 1994. “A dead person can’t be granted those kinds of things,” Pesek said.

He said this was an exception because of Carver’s unique relationship to Iowa State and his unique contributions to education.

Pesek said there was a loophole in the way the statement was written which allowed Carver to be honored.

He said honorary degrees are important to the university and to the faculty of the university.

“I think maybe the greatest benefit to Iowa State … is to bring recognition to Iowa State by recognizing outstanding people in the world who in some way are involved in things the university is doing.

“We are pointing to these people as exemplifying in some way at least one or more of the excellent characteristics that we admire in people of learning,” Pesek said.

He said the main benefit is that ISU gets to shine some light upon itself by identifying honorary degree holders and having them visit the campus.

Brun said nominations are only accepted from faculty members at Iowa State.

“We cannot accept an outside nomination from somebody at a company unless they worked with an academic department or a group of faculty on campus,” Brun said.

She said there is no requirement that the honorees be connected to Iowa State. “There are some exclusionary rules that they not be faculty or retirees from the university.”

Nominations may not be politically involved. “We do not want to get involved in partisan politics through the program. People who are in an elected office are not eligible,” Brun said.

She said nominations may not necessarily even hold an earned doctorate.

“There has been one case … where the honorary doctorate was awarded to someone who had not even earned a bachelor’s degree. They had entered the work force way back in the 1920s and had made some very spectacular inventions,” Brun said

She said there is no expectation upon ISU’s part that the person perform any service for the university.

“It is totally their personal choice. One exception is that we do encourage when they come to campus to receive the degree that they interact with the department in their field,” Brun said.

The nominations are due Nov. 29 for degrees to be awarded in May 1997 and beyond.

Brun said the committee will meet in December. “We then forward our committee recommendations to the Faculty Senate Executive Board.”

Upon being approved by the Faculty Senate Executive Board, the recommendations will travel through the president’s office and the Board of Regents before final approval can be given.

“All that we ask for as a minimum nomination is a two-page statement of the person’s contributions,” Brun said.

“We are really wanting to honor people who have made exemplary contributions in their field and also have worked in areas that are consistent with the kind of academic programs that are at Iowa State,” she said.