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Marilynne McKay, Professor of Medicine (Dermatology) Emerita

Your skin is a living, protective barrier between you and the environment, but summertime brings special challenges. When it's warm outside, we tend to wear less clothing and stay outside longer, exposing our skin to a spectrum of UV rays, insects, and allergenic plants. Dr. McKay will share what your dermatologist would like you to know about new sunscreen recommendations, insect repellents, and poison ivy precautions so you'll have a great time outdoors this summer--minus the blistering and peeling, nasty bites, and itchy rashes that could make your skin wish you'd paid closer attention to this lecture.  

About Marilynne McKay

There is perhaps no better way to introduce Marilynne (for those of you who might not know her) than to quote from John Bugge's nomination letter for the 2017 EUEC Faculty Award of Distinction:

She richly deserves it - for her achievements in her career as an Emory physician both before and after retirement; for her second career as a woman of the theater (actor, director, critic); and for her liberal service to the ongoing mission of this Emeritus College, not least through the quality of her intellectual contributions to the collective life of the mind it exists to promote. 

A graduate of the University of New Mexico with an MS from Oklahoma State University, Marilynne worked as a medical research technologist before deciding to enroll in medical school at the University of New Mexico.  Fittingly, as a dermatologist, she followed the sun with an internship in San Diego and a residency in Miami, coming to Emory as an assistant professor in 1980.  Here she rose to Chief of Dermatology at Grady Memorial Hospital and was later appointed Executive Director of Continuing Medical Education.  Her publications include articles and book chapters on vulvar disorders for generalists, as well as for specialists in dermatology, gynecology, and psychiatry.  She co-edited a classic textbook, Obstetric and Gynecologic Dermatology, and was elected President of the International Society for the Study of Vulvovaginal Disease.  Acclaimed as an informative and entertaining lecturer, she won the Teaching Exhibit Gold Award at the American Academy of Dermatology Annual Meeting in 1987, and she organized (and for six years directed) the forum on teaching techniques at the American Academy of Dermatology.  In 1999, Marilynne "semi"-retired, moving back to her hometown of Albuquerque, where she soon found herself chairing the dermatology department at Lovelace Health System.

Maybe her second career as a theater person officially began when she enrolled in a Master's Program in Directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance at UNM; it was an avocation she'd been preparing for most of her adult life, in the painstaking and even theatrical preparedness behind her award-winning teaching style in medicine.   

In 2005 she returned to Atlanta with her husband, Dr. Ronald Hosek, planning to combine her interests in medical teaching with her passion for the performing arts.  That same year she was invited to deliver Emory's seventh annual Mary Lynn Morgan Lecture on Women in the Health Professions, in which she reflected on her own experiences in teaching and doing clinical medicine; with typical drollery she titled her address, "The Vulva Monologue."   I had the good fortune to be able to share a stage with Marilynne in a performance of Wit, Margaret Edson's play about a woman dying of ovarian cancer, which is set in a patient's room of a large university hospital.  Marilynne directed the production and played the leading role; everything in the production went so well because she so seamlessly melded her own performance with her long experience in medical practice. Her talents as a director have been acknowledged by her appointment as a judge for the annual Suzi Bass Awards, which celebrate outstanding work from twenty Atlanta professional theaters in twenty-six performance categories.  Meanwhile, she continues to put in at least a full day of work each week in the Department of Dermatology at Grady Hospital, where - no surprise here - in 2010 she received the Emory Dermatology Teaching Award for the quality of her instruction of residents.  Finally, there is a certain dramatic flourish, I suppose, in the fact that Marilynne is that rare being, a Baker Street Irregular, a member of a society that, in the words of the novelist Lyndsay Faye, "present[s] a mysterious face to outsiders, wreathed in gaslit fog and draped in the obscuring mists of the moors, . . . an invitation-only concern."  In 2015 her essay on "Dressers to Professors: A Spectrum of Canonical Doctors" appeared in a collection directed at Holmes-and-Watson fans entitled Nerve and Knowledge: Doctors, Medicine and the Sherlockian Canon, illustrating yet another facet of her post-retirement versatility.

Finally, I want to take note of Marilynne's exemplary service to the Emeritus College in several ways.  The first is the public-relations work she's done and continues to do on behalf of the national meeting of AROHE, the Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education, to be held at Emory in October and sponsored by the Emeritus College.  Here she has demonstrated another set of skills entirely - artistic creativity in drafting, layout, and web-page design, along with a formidable aptitude in management.  In addition, several of her resourceful suggestions have been the inspiration for the Interdisciplinary Seminars held in the Emeritus College each year, while her participation in them has been a source of delight.  And finally, she has contributed that most essential quantum of all to the work of the Emeritus College (it is the thing that distinguishes her above all else) - a boundless and energetic enthusiasm for the life of the mind.

Marilynne has also given two recent Lunch Colloquiums for us--"The History of White People" and "Doctors in the Sherlockian Canon."

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Oded Borowski 

Professor Emeritus of Biblical Archaeology & Hebrew

An article titled "An Iron Age 'Steamer' from Tel Ḥalif" that I co-authored was just published in Israel Exploration Journal 69/1.  The article describes a fragment of a clay vessel discovered in summer 2016 at Tel Halif (Israel) in an area used for food preparation and that now is interpreted as part of a food steamer. If this interpretation is correct, we have the first physical/archaeological evidence for food steaming in 8th century BCE Judah.  Until now it was assumed that early Israelites/Judahites steamed their food, but no evidence existed.

Jagdish Sheth

Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing

Jag Sheth received the Thomas Jefferson Award at Commencement.  About this award, from the Provost website:  "To honor faculty and staff who have significantly enriched the intellectual and civic life of the Emory community, the Thomas Jefferson Award, named and endowed by the Robert Earl McConnell Foundation, is presented annually at Commencement.  The award honors a member of the faculty or staff for significant service to Emory University through personal activities, influence, and leadership, usually over the course of many years."

 

From Emory News:

 

This year's Thomas Jefferson Award winner is more accustomed to giving than receiving. Professor Jagdish Sheth, the Charles H. Kellstadt Chair in Marketing, is the 2019 winner of an award that honors a faculty or staff member who has significantly enriched the intellectual and civic life of the Emory community.

 

Sheth has combined intelligent inquiry, entrepreneurship and philanthropic zeal to build a career that includes publishing more than 350 research papers and books in various areas of marketing, including consumer behavior and marketing for emerging markets. In addition, he serves on the boards of the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta and the World Affairs Council of Atlanta, and he has been active advising international governments and policy makers including the U.S. Department of Transportation and the government of Singapore.

 

For Sheth, who has won a number of honors, the Jefferson Award holds particular meaning.

 

"This award is really special because it is selected by a committee of university-wide peers," says Sheth. "Also, it is special because the Jefferson Award reinforces that the mission of an academic is to unlock the potential of others."

 

Helping others find that potential is a passion of Sheth's and has fueled his research and teaching. Erika James, the John H. Harland Dean of Goizueta Business School, and seven others across campus detailed the breadth of Sheth's work and activities in a six-page nomination letter. The impact was not lost on the judges, all of whom are prior award winners.

 

"The committee was deeply impressed by the local, regional and international contributions Professor Sheth has made through his distinguished career at Emory," says Carol J. Rowland Hogue, Jules & Uldeen Terry Professor of Maternal and Child Health, professor of epidemiology and director of the Women's and Children's Center.

 

Adds Hogue, the 2017 Jefferson Award recipient: "He was nominated by leaders all across Emory University for his 'demonstrated energy, curiosity, continuous learning, advancing scholarship, generous mentorship and development, academic and social integrity, unbounded generosity, and selfless attention to personal and community development in the extended Emory global environment' over the span of his 25-year career at Emory." 

 

The personal nature of Sheth's commitment to students also impressed the committee. "Through his compelling teaching and mentorship, Professor Sheth's passion for preparing future generations of scholars and leaders is broadly known throughout Emory and beyond," says the Religion Department's Bobbi Patterson, 2015 award winner. "[In naming him] a Jefferson Award winner, we celebrate his creative and widely-recognized scholarship, service on countless Emory committees, the development of strong international relationships, and generous creation of awards for alums and faculty."

 

Generosity and global impact

 

For many across campus, Sheth's generosity is well-known.

 

"Jagdish Sheth is a visionary leader and beloved mentor, colleague, teacher and supporter of many important initiatives at Emory.  He and his wife, Madhu Sheth, and the Sheth Family Foundation, have been most generous in so many ways and we have become a better institution and better informed as individuals as a result," notes Holli A. Semetko, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Media & International Affairs, who served as Emory's vice provost for international affairs and director of The Halle Institute for Global Learning from 2003 to 2013.

 

"For example, with the Sheth Lecture in Indian Studies, Emory and Atlanta communities have hosted amazingly talented individuals in film, literature, politics, business, religion, spirituality and more," says Semetko. "With Jag and Madhu's support for the South Asia Collection at the Carlos Museum and with the gift of volumes of India's Supreme Court decisions to Emory's Law School library, we see the gift of knowledge generate benefits across Emory and the larger Atlanta community, and more."

 

James Curran, dean of the Rollins School of Public Health, echoes Sheth's global impact. 

 

"Jag Sheth is an incredible university leader who inspires us all to expand our global vision and act boldly to grasp opportunities," Curran says. "His persistent vision is enacted through persuasion, incentives, education and offering prestigious recognition of faculty, colleagues and alumni. He has been and remains a model global faculty member."

 

Sheth is also known to many as a friend.

 

"He is the full package - top scholar, highly respected in global public and private sectors, leader in pedagogy and education institution governance, generous with his advice and mentorship, highly respected by world leaders, and a strong servant to Emory University and each institution he has engaged," says fellow faculty member Benn Konsynski, the George S. Craft Professor in Information Systems & Operations Management at Goizueta. "I am proud to call him a friend." 

 

As the 57th recipient of the Jefferson Award, Sheth is the first faculty member from the Goizueta community to win the award - a fact that adds even more heft to the honor. 

 

"Anything that is unprecedented always feels like another major milestone in life's journey," notes Sheth, who turned 80 last year. "It means that the business school is an integral part of the university. It also means that the 'One Emory' vision of the new leadership is successfully implemented with respect to diverse faculty talent and expertise. Most importantly, this award will pave the way for others to be recognized for their talent and dedication to Emory and scholarship."

 

 

 

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Arthur W. Wainwright, Professor Emeritus of New Testament.

Arthur William Wainwright passed away on Saturday, April 27. He was born in Leeds, England on October 14, 1925, the son of Doris and Alfred Wainwright.  He attended Cross Flatts Council School and Leeds Grammar School.  He won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he studied classics and philosophy. After a year at Oxford he served as an underground coalminer under the Bevin Scheme from 1943 to 1947. He completed his studies at Oxford and candidated for the Methodist ministry, studying theology at Wesley House, Cambridge, after which he was appointed for a year to the Yeovil circuit.  He was assistant tutor at Handsworth Theological College from 1953 to 1957, being ordained into full connection in 1955. He served at Oxford Hall in the Manchester and Salford Mission from 1957 to 1962 where he was chaplain to Methodist students at the University and the College of Technology. For three years he served in the Wantage and Abingdon circuit, and in 1965 he joined the faculty of the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia where he taught New Testament until his retirement as emeritus professor in 1994.

Wainwright authored several academic books, including The Trinity in the New Testament (SPCK, 1962) and Mysterious Apocalypse (Abingdon, 1993). He also edited the two-volume critical edition of John Locke's A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul (Oxford, 1987).

Ever since he arrived in the United States, he attended North Decatur United Methodist Church. In 1959 he married Betty Ward, a Methodist deaconess in Manchester.  He is survived by her, their sons Martin and Philip, their grandchildren, Elizabeth, Alexandra, William and Thomas and their daughters-in-law, Christine Wainwright and Janet Donohoe.

Note:  Arthur's son, Philip, is currently Vice Provost for Global Strategy and Initiatives at Emory.