[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 74 (Tuesday, June 14, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 14, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
        TRIBUTE TO MELVIN D. GEORGE, PRESIDENT, ST. OLAF COLLEGE

 Mr. DURENBERGER. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to 
Melvin D. George, who has served with distinction as president of St. 
Olaf College, Northfield, MN. President George is retiring this year 
after 9 years of leading this outstanding liberal arts college.
  It is true that one of the primary missions of a college president is 
to raise the sights of the academic staff, draw alumni closer to the 
campus, and build the endowment to strengthen the college. Mel has 
accomplished all of that with great success. In addition, Mel George 
has been very instrumental in the establishment of the highly regarded 
Nobel Peace Prize forums.
  But as president of St. Olaf, Mel George is also renowned for his 
relationship with students. He has an exceptional gift of connecting 
and interacting with students. Mel and his wife Meta host receptions 
for first year students that enable each student to get to know their 
president personally. Many students recall the time he stayed in the 
dorm with freshmen during orientation week. He is known to read 
students bedtime stories, upon request. His own favorite is Daniel 
Pinkwater's ``Uncle Mel.'' And there was the time that Mel promised the 
1993 graduating class that, should they reach their fundraising goal, 
he would shave their numerals in his head. He was able to keep that 
promise just in time for graduation and the college choir's trip to 
Norway, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.
  Mel is an accomplished musician on a college campus filled with 
accomplished choristers, organists, and instrumentalists. Mel joins the 
tenor section of the chapel choir, plays flute from time to time in the 
college band, and has given a piano performance in a Mozart festival 
recital.
  Another friend of mine, the late Fr. Colman Barry, who was president 
at St. John's University, my alma mater, said in a commencement address 
at St. Olaf in its centennial year, 1974, ``For a college to preserve 
and impart a genius of its own will be, fearfully, a very radical idea 
in the future. There is a danger that no more than a core corps of 
private colleges may survive as exceptions.''
  Mr. President, 20 years after Fr. Colman's speech, St. Olaf continues 
to impart its own special genius. It has done that through the 
leadership of Mel George. Through his tenure, Mel has affirmed the 
values of the college. He has prepared St. Olaf to face the 21st 
century with confidence. And this college will not lose touch with its 
source of strength and heritage, as a college of the Lutheran Church, 
it embraces a global perspective.

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