12-1-98
FOUR RECEIVE SPECIAL COMMENCEMENT HONORS AT OHIO STATE
COLUMBUS -- The achievements of a Turkish author, an eminent
musician and scholar, a former Ohio State administrator and an
attorney will be recognized with special honors during The Ohio
State University’s autumn quarter commencement Dec. 11 in St.
John Arena.
Honorary doctorates will be presented to musician and
professor Leonard B. Meyer and author Adalet Agaoglu.
The Distinguished Service Award will be presented to Joan
Huber and John J. Barone.
Leonard B. Meyer, Doctor of Humane Letters
A pioneer of the interdisciplinary study of music, Leonard
B. Meyer has gained international recognition for his exploration
of the intellectual and cultural parallels to musical stylistic
developments.
A native of New York, Meyer earned his undergraduate and
graduate degrees from Columbia University, and his doctoral
degree from the University of Chicago. He held the position of
Benjamin Franklin Professor of Music and Humanities at the
University of Pennsylvania from 1975 until his retirement in
1988. Prior to that, he served on the faculty of the University
of Chicago Department of Music for some 30 years -- as head of
the Humanities Section, professor and chair of the Department of
Music, and as the Phyllis Fay Horton Professor in the Humanities.
His scholarship has been recognized with a number of honors,
fellowships and distinguished lectureships, including
appointments as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at
Wesleyan University and as the William Poland Lecturer at Ohio
State. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1971 and was
elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in
1974.
Adalet Agaoglu, Doctor of Humane Letters
Adalet Agaoglu is one of Turkey’s leading contemporary
authors, having written numerous plays, essays, short stories and
novels. She is among the founders of the first private theaters
in Ankara, Turkey.
Agaoglu earned her undergraduate degree in 1950 from Ankara
University, where she began publishing poetry while still a
student. She joined the staff of Ankara Radio in 1951 and worked
for 20 years as a dramatist and director of radio theater.
She has written eight critically acclaimed novels that have
been translated into English, French, German and other languages.
She was awarded the Schiller Medal from the German government in
1956, was named Turkey’s Woman of the Year in 1994, and received
the President of the Turkish Republic’s Grand Prize for Culture
and the Arts in 1995. A Turko-German feature film, Mercedes Mon
Amour, based on her novel Fikrimin Ince Gulu (The Delicate Rose
of My Desire), was produced in 1993 and won a special prize for
Best Film from the Federation of International Film Critics and
two prizes from the Federation of Turkish Film Critics.
Joan Huber, Distinguished Service Award
As Ohio State’s senior vice president for academic affairs
and provost from 1992 to 1993, Joan Huber was instrumental in
laying the groundwork for the university’s successful
restructuring and selective investment efforts.
A graduate of Pennsylvania State University, Huber earned
her master’s degree from Western Michigan University and her
doctoral degree from Michigan State University. She began her
academic career as an instructor in German at Penn State before
becoming a visiting professor and later an assistant professor at
the University of Notre Dame. In 1978, she became the director
of women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign; she was named head of the Department of Sociology in
1979.
In 1984, she became the dean of the College of Social and
Behavioral Sciences at Ohio State, transforming the college into
one of the university’s strongest units through her support of
departmental excellence. She also served as coordinating dean of
the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences from 1987 to 1992.
Although she retired in 1994, Huber remains actively
involved with Ohio State. She completed a study of WOSU, Ohio
State’s public radio and television station, in 1995, and served
as chair of the Committee to Evaluate the Ombuds Office and as a
member of the Committee to Evaluate the Office of Minority
Affairs.
John J. Barone, Distinguished Service Award
A member of Ohio State’s Board of Trustees from 1984 to
1993, John J. Barone is a retired attorney/partner and senior
member of John J. Barone & Associates of Toledo. He served as
Ohio State’s board chairman in 1992-93.
During his tenure on the board, the university’s endowment
fund rose from $117 million to $481 million, due in part to his
counsel as chair of the board’s Fiscal Affairs Committee. In
addition, he played an important role in Ohio State’s legislative
and fund-raising efforts by emphasizing that Ohio State’s mission
of teaching, research and service extended to the entire state of
Ohio.
It was Barone who proposed that Ohio State allow finance
students in the Fisher College of Business to invest $5 million
of the university’s endowment in the stock market as part of a
Student Investment Management class. Today the student-run fund
exceeds $12 million and has brought national attention to the
business school.
Barone attended Canisius Jesuit College and Miami University
before earning his law degree from Ohio State. From 1987 to
1990, he served on the Ohio State University Research Foundation
Board of Directors and was appointed by the dean and the faculty
of the College of Law as associate editor of the Ohio State Law
Journal. He is a member of the American, Federal, Ohio State and
Toledo Bar Associations and the American Judicature Society. He
also served as United States Magistrate for the Northern District
of Ohio, Western Division from 1945 to 1964.
Active in the Toledo-area business community, Barone is
general counsel and board chairman of Barone Enterprises Inc. and
Rosie’s Fine Foods Inc. He has served as general counsel,
officer and director of Driggs Dairy Farms, the Village Farm
Dairy Co., Toledo Milk Processing, and Allied Gear and Sprocket.
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Contact: Tracy Turner, University Communications, (614) 688-3682.