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Show Dixie College, St. George, Utah Volume XXVIIKNumber March 13, 1987 11 Alder to be inaugurated as Dixies 14th president Bruce & Derma Humphreys SUN Staff Writer The next couple of days are going to be very busy for the students of Dixie College and for all the people of the Southern Utah area. There are three very important events taking place: the seccession of Southern Utah from the rest of the state, the annual meeting of the Board of Regents, and of course, the inauguration of Dixies new president, Douglas D. Alder. The inauguration will take place on Friday in the Dixie Center at 6.30 P.M. and there are still plenty of tickets available for any students that desire to attend the cermony. Dixie Colleges new president, Douglas D. Alder, grew up in the Salt Lake City area and he attended his first years of school in the Salt Lake School System. He attended the University of Utah in 1951 and earned both his Bachelors and Masters Degrees from there. He then got married to Elaine Reiser and they moved to Eugene, Oregon to complete his doctoral work. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in 1966. He and his family then went to Europe where he did research on his doctoral at the University of Vienna. Dr. Alder said, I had already been to Europe several times before I went to the U. of Vienna where I did my doctoral dissertation on the inter-wa- r period between 1918 and when the Nazis took over in Austria. After returning to the United States, he took a position at Utah State University and remained there for 23 years. He said, My main field is Central European History, including the Germanic Languages. He started out at Utah State teaching history and almost immediat-l- y got into administrative work. He relayed, At the end of my first year I became the director of an institute for advance training of high school teachers in the social sciences. That was in the fall of 1964. For the first five years, he worked both as an instructor and as director of the program. The program was first for high school teachers and then went on to help the vets that were returning to civialian life. He said, After concluding that for five years, we had a new president at Utah State and he commisioned a study of undergraduate education and out of that came a program to help the faculty become better teachers. For five years, I directed a center for the improvement for instruction. After finishing two sabbaticals he returned to Utah State to become head of the Honors Program. He was director of the Honors Program for 12 years. All during this time, he was an instructor in the history department and was very involved with academic administration. He said, After this, I was asked to become president of Dixie College. Sue Marie Young said, Dr. Douglas D. Alder has a rare combination of abilities and interest. He is a stimulating teacher, both in the classroom and in more personal settings. He will give Dixie College the intellectual and educational leadership which the Regents believe will stir a sense of educational vision for teachers and students and at the same P time, will interpret the academic world and the larger community to one another. He will be a great, great president in our system. President Alder has been held in high esteem by faculty and administrators throughout the state for a very long time. He said, Some faculty members at Dixie telephoned me and told me that President Wade was leaving and the asked me if they could submit my name to become president of Dixie College. A few of the faculty at Dixie had been my students and also, one of the faculty had gone through graduate school with me as well. There were a lot of applicants for president and someone told me that there were about a hundred applicants; but, I do not 'know for sure how many there really were. President Alder has been quite busy getting to know all the staff and faculty at the college but he said,I am just getting started and I do not know that I have done a lot, I actually intended to get a slow start because I wanted to be sure that 1 interviewed each one on campus slowly and listen to all the issues and let everyone that had suggestions get to me. It has been my intention to get to all of them but I have not even completed it yet. I still have quite a few people to interview. I have really learned a lot and it has been a very enjoyable process, people have really been fantastic. I feel that I have already made a lot of friends. Now the day I got here, we were already in the middle of a major budget slash and that consumed the first three months and now we face anther one of the same proportion - id so budget crises consumes much ol the time. We would surely like to get beyond this and get ST GEORGE Dixie College President Douglas D Alder, tak- ing a short break from the pressures of his very busy schedule, on with the job. When asked if he was excited about the inauguration, he said, I feel a bit like Prince Phillip. The committee has really done a great job and the inauguration is going on quite independant of me. You cannot imagine the hundreds of hours that it has taken to plan this. Dan Watson has really been a tremendous chairman and there is a committee that has worked with him. They are the ones that are under the continued on page 2 will be inaugurated as Dixie's 14th president Friday ai 6 30 p m in the new Dixie Center Auditorium (SUN photo Kelly Moulton) In this issue of the SUN Student Opinion AIDS epidemic Baseball team 1 NCAA predictions Intramural finals Rebels end season 30 - 3 7-- pg.3 pg.4 pg.6 pg.6 pg.7 pg.8 |