1978 Recipients

Dr. McFarland received a master's degree from the University of Chicago and a doctorate from Cornell University.

A professor of business administration at the University of Alabama, he served as a management consultant in the furniture manufacturing, insurance and food processing industries, as well as to federal and state government agencies and nonprofit organizations.

He is the author and editor of twenty books and an elected Fellow of the International Academy of Management.

Mr. Storrs conceived and directed the engineering for the ground electronics blind landing system used during the Berlin Air Lift.

While with the Federal Aviation Administration, he contributed significantly to the modernization of the air traffic control system in the late 1960s.

He developed the equipment for an automatic radar landing system and supervised the preparation of the specifications for the first nationwide computer controlled enroute tracking system.

Mr. Ryor, who also received a master's degree from WMU, began his career as a mathematics teacher and was chosen "Teacher of the Year" for the state of Michigan in 1973.

In 1975, he was named president of the National Education Association and was the first to hold that position for two terms.

He also served as an assistant to President Jimmy Carter, and as the executive director of the education associations for the states of Illinois and Florida.

Ms. Spear founded the School of Occupational Therapy at the Kalamazoo State Hospital in 1922, one of the five original such schools in the United States.

In 1944, the school moved to WMU as a department which she headed until her retirement in 1958.

Under her leadership, the department offered one of the first graduate programs in the country. Ms. Spear, a graduate student at WMU in the 940s, received the National Award of Merit from the American Occupational Therapy Association in 1960.

Dr. VanHattum received master's and doctoral degrees from Pennsylvania State University. A nationally known expert in the field of speech pathology and audiology, he was a professor and chairperson of the communication disorders department at the State University of New York-Buffalo.

He is the author of numerous books and articles, and he served as president of the American Speech and Hearing Association.