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Long-time St. Olaf College professor David Wee named honorary member of North Central Association

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July 12, 2001

NORTHFIELD, Minn. ? St. Olaf College English faculty member David Wee has been named an honorary member for life by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. Wee?s honor ? for extraordinary service to the association? is rare, for the association has named only some 180 honorary members in its 106-year history.

The North Central Association is the nation?s oldest regional accrediting agency for colleges and secondary schools.

Wee has been a leader of the association since 1984, serving its Higher Learning Commission as a consultant-evaluator, board member and member of several committees. He has served the association as its vice president (1998-?99) and president (1999-2000).

Under his leadership the association was restructured in preparation for a new century of service.

Wee has provided extraordinary service to the association "through his generosity of time, talents and wisdom," according to a citation presented by the board.

"David was unofficially our poet laureate, using his remarkable gifts of wit, wisdom and language to enrich each of our meetings," said Margaret B. Lee, current president of the North Central Association and president of Oakton Community College, Des Plaines, Ill. Wee memorialized each board meeting with a poem "created for the occasion," Lee said.

In 1984 Wee was appointed to the Consultant-Evaluator Corps of the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education (now the Higher Learning Commission) ? one of two commissions that comprise the North Central Association (the other is the Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement, which evaluates secondary schools). In 1993 he was elected to a four-year term on the commission board, and in 1996 he received the commission?s Distinguished Service Award. After that he served as association vice president and president.

As a consultant-evaluator Wee has served on more than 25 teams that visited liberal arts and nontraditional institutions. He also has served on the Accreditation Review Council, the Institutional Actions Committee, as chair of the Committee on Commission Programs and Activities and as a member of the Executive Committee.

Wee has been a member of the St. Olaf College faculty for 36 years. He started teaching at the college in 1965; served as assistant dean from 1974-?76; was associate academic dean; and was senior tutor of the Paracollege for seven years. He has led 11 off-campus domestic and international studies programs, and has been a visiting professor at Macalester College and the University of Northern Iowa.

He has administered a number of grants, including the $600,000 Project General Education Models and a $300,000 National Endowment for the Humanities challenge grant.

Wee earned a bachelor?s degree (magna cum laude) in English and history from St. Olaf in 1961. He received a master?s and Ph.D. in English from Stanford University in 1965 and 1967.

An All-American distance runner and member of the St. Olaf Athletic Hall of Fame, Wee is an assistant coach of the St. Olaf women?s cross-country team. He also is the author of a series of poems about baseball, and teaches a course about baseball and American values. He has written several articles and has given dozens of addresses about literature, values and education.

Wee and his wife, Karen Herseth Wee, have been honored with the Saints and Reformers Award from the Lutherans Concerned/Twin Cities for founding and developing the Northfield PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) chapter.

St. Olaf College prepares students to become responsible citizens of the world, fostering development of mind, body and spirit. A four-year, coeducational liberal arts college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), St. Olaf has a student enrollment of 2,950 and a full-time faculty complement of approximately 300. It is one of Money Guide?s top 100 "elite values in college education today," and it leads the nation?s colleges in percentage of students who study abroad.

Contact Michael Cooper at 507-786-3315 or cooperm@stolaf.edu.