ANN ARBOR—Eight University of Michigan faculty members were given the emeritus title by the U-M Regents at their Sept. 16-17 meeting.

Those retiring are Frithjof H. Bergmann, professor of philosophy; Sunil K. Das, professor of internal medicine; Sally Holden, associate professor of dental hygiene; Charles C. Kelsey, professor of dentistry;

Neil O. Leighton, professor political science at the U-M-Flint; Michael A. Schork, professor of biostatistics; Frederic N. Smith, professor of dentistry; and Richard M. Zillich, professor of dentistry.

Bergmann joined the U-M faculty in 1958. “His interests include continental philosophy?especially Hegel, Nietzsche, Sartre, and existentialism generally?and also social and political philosophy,” the Regents noted. “In his teaching, he is renowned for his breadth of vision, passion, energy, and eloquence. Since 1981, Prof. Bergmann has been involved in the founding and development of the Center for New Work in Flint. He has served as director of the center since it opened in 1984. His contributions to the study of new work have reflected his interest in practical, social, and cultural implications of philosophical thought, most notably strands he has identified in Hegel and other 19th-century theorists.”

Das, who joined the U-M faculty in 1967, “has contributed strength and vitality to both instructional and research programs in the Department of Internal Medicine. He has been an outstanding educator of medical students, house officers, and fellows. His teaching skills were recognized when he was given the H. Marion Pollard Award for Outstanding Resident Teaching in 1988. Dr. Das’ imaginative and outstanding clinical and teaching efforts have brought distinction to the Division of Cardiology and Department of Internal Medicine.”

Holden joined the U-M as a research associate in 1967. “She has been an integral member of the dental hygiene program faculty during her tenure at the School of Dentistry,” the Regents said. “She has been involved with 85 theses in the fields of periodontics, occlusion, dental hygiene, orthodontics, and endodontics and has mentored students in the School of Nursing and at Kalamazoo College. Her publications have been in the areas of occlusion and oral hygiene. She has published workbooks on dental anatomy and occlusion and is a contributing author for a textbook on physiology and occlusion.”

Kelsey, who joined the U-M faculty in 1964, “has been a strong participant in the department’s teaching and clinical activity at the pre-doctoral and graduate levels and through continuing dental education programs. He served as co-chair of the International Prosthodontics Workshop on Complete Denture Occlusion in 1972. He was appointed school historian in 1972. During the School of Dentistry’s centennial celebration in 1975, Dr. Kelsey was an integral part of the alumni program titled ‘History of the School of Dentistry.’ He was also an integral part of the Gordon H. Sindecuse Museum of Dentistry committee during its development.”

Leighton joined the U-M-Flint faculty in 1973. “His distinguished career includes field research in Sierra Leon, where he studied Lebanese emigration,” the Regents said. “He taught and conducted research in South Africa and was visiting professor and chair at the University of Western Cape. He was a leader in pioneering the use of oral history to reconstruct and analyze the Flint Sit-Down Strike, which led to the creation of the United Auto Workers. He later developed a course, ‘Exploring Community History,’ in which students used the technique of oral history to learn about the community in which they live and work.”

Schork, who joined the U-M faculty in 1962, was named senior associate dean for academic affairs in the School of Public Health in 1997, having first served as acting associate dean and associate dean. “He has made valuable contributions to the teaching of the fundamentals of biostatistics since the department’s inception in the early 1960s as an area of methodology at the interface of statistics and biomedical research. He is the co-author of one of the earliest, and still highly respected, texts developing the concepts, computations, and interpretations of basic statistical procedures for investigators and students in the health sciences.”

Smith, who joined the U-M faculty in 1971, “started a private practice in periodontics in 1976 and reduced his professorial appointment to half time in 1980. He was a director or co-director of many predoctoral, graduate, and postgraduate courses. His main area of research interest was in the immune responses to plaque antigens in patients with varying degrees of periodontal disease. Due to his interest in the clinical education of graduate periodontic students, Dr. Smith has spent the last portion of his teaching career assisting these graduate students in honing their clinical and didactic skills.”

Zillich joined the U-M faculty in 1970. “Since 1973, he has practiced the specialty of endodontics and has provided both didactic and clinical instruction at the predoctoral, graduate, and postgraduate levels. He has served on a number of School of Dentistry committees and has also been active in organized dentistry at the local and national levels. He developed several teaching manuals for the School in the field of endodontics, where his main area of research interest was in the variant root morphology of teeth. He served as a member or chair of several master’s thesis committees during his tenure at the School.”

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