Carolyn L. Rose receives George Washington University Medal

Carolyn Rose was awarded The George Washington University
President's Medal by President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg at a
ceremony on Monday, May 13, 2002, in Bethesda, Maryland.

Prior awardees include Vaclav Havel, President of the Czech
Republic; Abba Eban, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. and
former Israeli Foreign Minister; Walter Cronkite, distinguished
journalist and commentator; Victor Borge, musician/humorist; and
Mikhail Gorbachev, former President of the Soviet Union.

At a reception following the event, Smithsonian Undersecretary for
Science J. Dennis O'Connor personally thanked Carolyn for her
contributions to both George Washington University and the
Smithsonian Institution, and, in particular, to the Department of
Anthropology, for her leadership in forging a strong direction and
vision for the future.

President Trachtenberg's Speech

    The George Washington University is a collection of many
    treasures, and one of the best and brightest of these treasures
    is Carolyn Rose.

    Carolyn Rose is an internationally distinguished conservation
    scientist who has set the standard for the field. She earned an
    undergraduate degree at Sweet Briar College in art history in
    1971 and then set her sights on graduate school at The George
    Washington University, only to discover that the field that she
    wanted to study didn't exist.

    Undeterred, she created both the field and the degree, earning a
    master's degree in 1976 in special studies with a concentration
    that is surely the most complicated in the university's history,
    since she chose to study in four areas: anthropology, art
    history and classical archaeology, conservation science, and
    museum studies.

    Ms. Rose went on to become one of the first ethnographic
    conservators in the country. She became, in essence, a one-woman
    graduate school who has taught every prominent person in the
    field who works with anthropological objects. She was absolutely
    vital to the establishment of the Museum Studies Program at The
    George Washington University, taught the first course in
    conservation in the Anthropology Department at GW, and became
    the chair of the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian's
    National Museum of Natural History.

    She continues to teach, advise and serve on the Museum Studies
    committee and to further strengthen the longstanding
    relationship between George Washington University and the
    Smithsonian Institution.

    Somewhere in this country, a young person is looking through a
    microscope or conducting a chemistry experiment or learning the
    principles of metallurgy with the intention having a career in a
    field made possible by Carolyn Rose.

    For her love of learning, her scholarship, and her great
    contributions to her alma mater, The George Washington
    University hereby bestows on Carolyn Rose the President's Medal
    with all the rights, duties, privileges and opportunities
    pertaining thereto.

See <URL:http://www.nmnh.si.edu/anthro/features/rose.htm> for
photograph

Amparo R. de Torres
Special Projects Officer
Conservation Division, LMG 38
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave SE
Washington, DC 20540-4530, USA
202.707.1120
Fax: 202.707.1525


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 15:82
                  Distributed: Thursday, June 6, 2002
                       Message Id: cdl-15-82-002
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