LehighWeek Volume 01, Issue 18

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JAMES D. GUNTON
Lehigh Names New Dean
Of Arts And Science
James D. Gunton, professor of
physics and director of the Center for
Computational Science at Temple
University, has been named dean of
the College of Arts and Science at
Lehigh University.
The appointment, effective
July 1, was announced today by
David A. Sanchez, provost at Lehigh.
"Professor Gunton was one of
four finalists presented to me by the
search committee, who did a superb
job of recruiting qualified candidates
for the position," said Sanchez.
"I'm confident Jim will be an
outstanding dean," said the provost.
"He has a strong appreciation for the arts, humanities and social sciences, and
he recognizes the potential of the college.  He's a builder, an 'ideas' person,
and he has a good sense of faculty, as well as a good sense of humor."
Gunton currently directs a $2-million supercomputer system at
Temple, a smaller version of the system at Cornell, which makes possible
"parallel processing," the solution of many complex problems simultaneously.
As dean of Lehigh's College of Arts and Science, Gunton will be
heading the largest of the university's three undergraduate colleges. The arts
college comprises 191 faculty members, or 49 percent of all full-time faculty,
and approximately 1,800 students, or 40 percent of undergraduate enrollment.
A member of the Temple faculty since 1970, Gunton served on a
presidential committee on "the future of Temple," a long-range planning
effort for the university. He also has extensive budgetary experience at the
college and university level.
He has published more than 100 articles in theoretical physics and
much of his research has a computational as well as a mathematical formulation.
Gunton received a bachelor's degree with highest honors at Linfield
College, Oregon, and received a Rhodes Scholarship. Upon receiving a
bachelor's degree in physics at Oxford, he was named a Danforth Fellow and
attended Stanford, where he earned a doctorate in physics. He was also an
honorary Woodrow Wilson Fellow and a Stanford Research Fellow.
Gunton has been a visiting professor at universities and institutes in
Japan, Switzerland, Germany, Australia and France.
He is a member of the American Physical Society, Sigma Xi and the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He also has participated in
several national committees and panels, primarily devoted to computational
mathematics, supercomputing and materials science.
Gunton and his wife Peggy have three children. They will relocate to
the Lehigh Valley in the spring.
Oil And The Middle East
Topic Of Lehigh Colloquium
Dr. Gad G. Gilbar, the Philip and Muriel Berman Visiting Scholar at the Lehigh
Valley Center for Jewish Studies, will be the guest speaker at an economics
colloquium on Wednesday, March 2. He will discuss "The Oil Decade and Its
Aftermath in the Middle East: Some Economic and Political Aspects" at 4 p.m.
in room 207 of Drown Hall.
His talk is open to the public free of charge. It is sponsored
by Lehigh's economics department.
Dr. Gilbar is also an economic historian in the department of
Middle Eastern history at the University of Haifa in Israel. He has served as an
expert witness at hearings of the Knesset Committee on Foreign Affairs and
Defense, and has contributed articles on current Middle Eastern affairs to Israeli
newspapers and been interviewed on Israeli television and radio. He has written
extensively on economic changes and trends in Egypt, Iran, and the oil-producing Arab states in professional journals.
Prof. Gilbar earned both bachelor's and master's degrees from
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and received his doctorate from the
University of London.
Professional Playwright
In Residence At Lehigh
Easton native Adriana Trigiani, a professional playwright based in New York City, has returned to the
Lehigh Valley to serve as a playwright in residence in
Lehigh University's theater department.
Trigiani is working with students
during Lehigh's production other play, "True Colours,"
which will be performed in Wilbur Drama Workshop
March 4-6 and 8-10. Pam Pepper, visiting assistant
professor at the University, will direct the play, which **
consists of two one-act comedies, "Stories to be Read Aloud" and "Tray Chic."
As a playwright, Trigiani's works have been widely produced
in New York City and theatres nationwide. Her "Secrets of the Lava Lamp,"
written for Camille Saviola, was produced at the Manhattan Theatre Club in
1985. "Seasons of Light" which was commissioned last year by George
Keathley, artistic director of the Missouri Repertory Theatre, will be featured in
a citywide theatre festival in Kansas City this April. "Tray Chic" is a finalist in
the Ensemble Studio Theatre One-Act Play Marathon competition; winners will
be announced in early March.
Pennsylvania is a "strong arts state" according to Trigiani,
who cites many active professional, community and academic theatres statewide.
Due to the Lehigh Valley's location and high concentration of performing
groups, she believes it has the potential to become "the regional test site for New
York City."
As costs for producing new plays continue to rise, playwrights
and producers have begun to turn to academic theatres as proving grounds for
developing new scripts. Trigiani is an enthusiastic proponent of this university
connection, adding "academic theatres are professional theatres."
Among the benefits of an on-campus residency are that it
allows the playwright to see his or her work in progress and concentrate on
rewrites and revisions without the pressure to produce the show as a commercial
venture. Students learn more about the theatre as a profession, gain work
experience, and can develop valuable professional contacts by working with the
playwright.
"This sort of residency offers a tremendous opportunity to
expand the educational impact of our B.A. program on our theatre students,"
said Prof. Augustine Ripa, head of Lehigh's current division of speech and
theater. "An artist in residence can do great things for our theatre students,
much more so than a single campus performance by a 'big star,' due to the
opportunities for training and contact with a working professional.
"On a larger scale, a residency, especially one which culmi-
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