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A
Toast Offered by Associate Provost and Dean for Academic
Development John Davis
 The fact that I am reading
this toast may possibly mean that Margaret Zelljadt, Professor
of German Studies, has actually retired. Twice before she
signaled her intention to retire. Each time, the College
pleaded with her to put off her departure, and each time
she characteristically agreed to extend her long service
to Smith College. That service is equaled by few: 43 years
on the faculty, 17 years as class dean, 6 years as chair
of the German department, 6 years directing the Junior Year
Abroad program in Hamburg, 2 years as Associate Dean for
International Study, and 2 years as the College’s Director
of Graduate Studies. I won’t put your quantitative skills
to the test of summing up all those years of service, because
her contributions to those offices go far beyond mere numbers.
Margaret graduated from the
University of Michigan in 1963, with honors not in German,
but in French. Her M.A. in German from Indiana University
came in 1967, following two years at the Freie Universität Berlin, supported by a Fulbright-Hays
Fellowship, and summers in Weimar. She taught for a year
at Spelman College before receiving the invitation to join
the faculty of Smith College as an Instructor in 1968.
Shortly
after arriving at Smith, she began her doctoral work at the
University of Massachusetts while shouldering a full-time
teaching load (which, at the time, I can assure you, was
not 2-2+). She completed her Ph.D. in 1976, working under
Carroll Reed. She became one of a very few scholars in the
United States specializing in Middle Low German of the late
medieval period. Her dissertation was published by Peter
Lang in 1979 as A Descriptive Grammar of the Lübecker Bibel
of 1494. In later years, she continued her work on this early
German dialect, through her research on the scholar Agathe
Lasch (who taught at Bryn Mawr College in the early twentieth
century and specialized in Middle Low German) and on Sebastien
Brant’s Narrenschiff.
However, two other publications
perhaps do a better job of signaling her devotion to Smith
and to her work in the field of international education:
her meticulously researched “One Hundred Years of German at Smith,” and her
article, co-authored with Denise Rochat in 1998, “Beyond
Accidental Tourism: The Case for a Junior Year Abroad,” with
the accent on YEAR. Margaret’s colleagues describe her as
a masterful teacher, philologist, and linguist who worked
particularly hard at equipping students in the early stages
of learning German with the tools and skills to ensure their
success during their junior year in Hamburg (and the same
might be said of the faculty who would direct the program,
who relied on her for advice and counsel). She created GER
110, the intensive elementary class--a “legend” in the department’s
curriculum which was taught for two decades--and she was
also a pioneer in computer-aided language instruction in
the mid-1980s. Within the department, she functioned as the
institutional memory, and colleagues tell stories of many
an awkward moment diffused by her good nature and infectious
laugh.
Perhaps the most interesting
thing I have learned about Margaret’s tenure at Smith is that her early contributions
to college life included appearing in a number of Gilbert
and Sullivan productions. It has been suggested that the
role of Lord High Executioner in The Mikado might have been
a kind of professional development for her later job as Dean
of the Senior Class, however having seen her in action in
College Hall, constantly working to ensure the academic success
of her charges, while always adhering to the strictest and
fairest standards, I would suggest a better comparison would
be with the virtuous, principled, and generous Frederic,
in The Pirates of Penzance, who lives by the motto, “Duty
is before all.” |
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