Skip to main content

In Memoriam | Summer 2009

In Memoriam: Faculty & Friends

Notices sorted by graduation date

James Norman Dent of Charlottesville died Jan. 31, 2009. He served in the U.S. Army Air Forces as an aviation physiologist during World War II, then in the U.S. Air Force Reserve until 1986. After teaching at Marquette University and the University of Pittsburgh, he joined the U.Va. Department of Biology in 1949, where he taught until he retired as a professor emeritus in 1986. Mr. Dent’s research was primarily concerned with developmental physiology and comparative endocrinology, and most of his experiments were conducted with amphibians. In 1963, he served as special consultant to the Philippine Atomic Energy Commission in Manila. Memorial contributions may be made to the James Norman Dent Award, c/o the U.Va. Fund, P.O. Box 400314, Charlottesville, VA 22904.

Barbara Nolan of Charlottesville died Feb. 7, 2009. She was a professor emeritus of medieval literature at the University of Virginia. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship,  two Fulbright Scholarships and a Rhodes Scholarship. She was the author of two books related to Chaucer’s poetry and many articles. Ms. Nolan was a trustee of the New Chaucer Society and served on the advisory board of the Review Journal of Medieval Literature. She was vice provost for instructional development at U.Va. for 10 years and helped establish programs for American Sign Language and English as a second language, as well as U.Va.’s International Residential College. She was a founding board and executive committee member of the Reinvention Center, a national organization dedicated to the improvement of undergraduate education at research universities.  Survivors include her husband, John Thomas, director of the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University. Memorial contributions may be made to the Barbara Nolan Fund, c/o the U.Va. Fund, P.O. Box 400314, Charlottesville VA 22904.

Mary Willis of Fredericksburg, Va., died Jan. 21, 2009. An educator and civic leader, she represented Mary Washington College on U.Va.’s Board of Visitors between 1944 and 1952. Ms. Willis served as treasurer of the Fredericksburg branch of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities and on the trustee board of the James Monroe Museum in Fredericksburg.