Proceedings of the Board of Regents (1960-1963)

APPENDIX A

HONORARY DEGREES, JUNE 1963
DOCTOR OF ARCHITECTURE
ALDEN BALL DOW, architect of Midland, Michigan; student at the
University from 1923 to 1926. It is a happy reflection, in an age vexed
by contraries, that the individual artist remains able to reconcile demands popularly supposed to be at variance. It is a peculiar pleasure
to honor Alden Dow, who, in the many buildings which he has
designed in this state and elsewhere, has united boldness with decorum,
individuality with a loving concern for traditional values, and practical
utility with aspiration toward the ideal. In conferring on him the
degree Doctor of Architecture, the University pays tribute to his
technical proficiency, to his high sense of personal and civic duty,
and to the unique combination of these which animates his work.
DOCTOR OF ENGINEERING
JOHN FRANKLIN GORDON, President and Chief of Operations of
the General Motors Corporation; Master of Science in the Class of
1923. The man who now directs the operations of the world's largest
industrial company attained that eminence through the versatility
of his talents and the singleness of his purpose. Though an engineer
by professional background, he has been able as if by instinct to
adjudicate between material demands and the desires of persons, including persons so whimsical as the American consumer of automobiles. And the same discipline of mind which has permitted him
to hold competing claims in balance, has enabled him to refer all of
the myriad demands upon him to the best interests of his corporation.
Upon this paradigm of the devoted industrial executive, the University is now privileged to confer the degree Doctor of Engineering.
DOCTOR OF HUMANE LETTERS
SIR CHARLES PERCY SNOW, physicist, public servant, novelist, a man
so variously gifted that any one of his several careers would justify
our honoring him here. Sir Charles commends himself to an academic
audience by his discerning literary studies of the ethics and politics
of intellectual communities, wherein he has perceived politics at least
to flourish and ethics not wholly to languish. He commends himself
to all men of good will by his eloquent espousal of a culture based
at once on scientific realism and a humane sensitivity to ethical values.
In conferring on him the degree Doctor of Humane Letters, we pay
him tribute for exemplifying throughout his versatile life that union
of disinterested intelligence and moral earnestness which he urges
upon us all.
DOCTOR OF HUMANITIES
The Right Reverend JOHN MELVILLE BURGESS, Suffragan Bishop
of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts; Bachelor of

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