President emeritus J. Fred Young, retired professor John G. Sullivan and retired associate dean Lela Faye Coltrain Rich received Elon Medallions on Aug. 25, 2008, in an annual ceremony that celebrates the highest honor a person can receive from the university.
J. Fred Young
Young, Lambert’s predecessor, served the university from 1973 to 1998. During his presidency, Elon made quantitative strides in every area by which the quality of an institution of higher learning is assessed: applications for admission, enrollment, quality of students, graduation rates, size and quality of faculty, academic programs, financial resources and physical plant.
A proponent of experiential learning, Young encouraged the development of several distinctive Elon programs—study abroad, leadership development, volunteer service, internships, and undergraduate research—and gathered them under the rubric “Elon Experiences,” thereby underscoring their significance and increasing student participation.
Young also commissioned a landscape architecture firm to prepare a comprehensive campus plan and took personal interest in the design and placement of every new facility and the landscaping of the grounds
John G. Sullivan
From 1970 until his retirement in 2006, Sullivan was a member of the Elon University faculty, admired for his wisdom, honored for his compassion, and lauded for his surpassing skills as a teacher and immeasurable contributions to the institution.
With an unparalleled and diverse record of service to the institution, Sullivan has been a member, and often chair, of every important faculty committee. He chaired the Department of Philosophy for 18 years and was a member of the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges reaccreditation self-study steering committees in two different decades.
Sullivan helped develop the university’s interdisciplinary honors program; was a member of the general studies committee that helped revise Elon’s curriculum in 1994; was the first coordinator of the Asian-Pacific studies program; served on the 1998 presidential search committee; led Elon’s participation in the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning; and delivered the Elon commencement address in May 2002, concluding his 20-plus years as designated back-up commencement speaker.
Lela Faye Coltrain Rich
Rich served Elon University for 29 years, from 1978 until her retirement in 2007 as associate dean of academic support. Beginning her career as the grants coordinator, Rich authored a grant proposal to fund a pre-major advising program, which led to the creation of the Academic Advising Center and to her appointment as coordinator of student retention.
In 1982, Rich instituted a freshman seminar program, Elon 101, an elective course which has become a key component of Elon’s first-year experience, involving 99 percent of the freshman class. She began administering the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator psychometric questionnaire in 1988 to all first-year students to help them identify how they learn most effectively. By analyzing Myers-Briggs data about the learning styles of Elon students, Rich provided information that had impact upon both the 1994 revision of the curriculum and the development of hands-on learning opportunities that have become components of the Elon Experiences.
Rich was regularly asked to undertake “additional duties as assigned,” co-chairing the faculty-staff component of the Investing in Excellence Campaign, chairing the Common Reading Committee, and helping to create and oversee Elon’s innovative co-curricular El Centro de Español.