This year, the College will bid farewell to three well-respected professors: Professor of Geology Ed Belt, Professor of Economics Richard Beals and Professor of English Richard Cody, who, combined, have dedicated over a century's worth of their lives to educating students at the Fairest College.
Old school geology
After rejecting the College as an undergraduate, Ed Belt found a home among the teaching faculty of the geology department in 1965. During his time on the faculty he has seen many changes in the atmosphere and administration of the College.
Belt received his B.A. from Williams College in 1955, his M.A. from Harvard University in 1957 and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1963.
Belt toured the College in 1951, considering applying as an undergraduate. He chose instead to apply to Williams and Princeton. "I got into both. [When applying to colleges,] I looked at both the university level and small college level."
Belt, the Samuel A. Hitchcock Professor in Mineralogy and Geology, said that he began teaching because of good experiences with other teachers. "All the people that I enjoyed being with at graduate school were people heading for teaching … I tried it and I liked it. There's no training for professors. You get your Ph.D., you get your first job, and then you're standing in front of a class. I like to yak; I like to do research; I figured, 'sooner or later, I'll make a good teacher.'" He has become the "good teacher" that his junior colleagues have come to respect and admire.
He came to Amherst after four years of teaching at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. "A friend of mine from Yale Graduate School was there at the time," said Belt of his time at Villanova. "The Geology department there-in 1963-was the only department on campus that was all Ph.D.s. It was an exciting group, but the University had no tenure system, no faculty senate … and they paid very poorly."
"Jobs would come along. I knew I had to leave … and I knew I'd prefer a place with undergraduates. The only job opening in 1965-at a school or college of any stature-was at Amherst College," said Belt.
It was the influence of Professor of Geology Pete Foose that helped bring Belt to Amherst. "I didn't know much about the school as a whole. I had met the chair, Pete Foose, in 1950," said Belt. "He was a strong go-getter; he had founded the geology department at Franklin and Marshall [University.] And so I thought to myself, 'This is a great outfit.'"
Belt spoke extensively about the changes the College has been through during his tenure. "The tone of the College is quite influenced by the president and by the personality of the president," he said. "Cal Plimpton is certainly different from Tom Gerety. The tone of the College is also quite influenced by the Trustees. Right now, the Trustees are in the process of building a new geology building. We've been asking for decades for new facilities or an upgrade to the existing facility. Tom Gerety was the first president to respond to the challenge."
Belt said that the atmosphere of the student body today is different from that when he first arrived at the College. "[In the 1960s,] students were first flexing their ability to challenge the establishment," reflected Belt. "Students don't challenge the establishment the same way now."
Two of the changes Belt has seen in his time at the College have been coeducation and the abolition of the fraternity system. " ... As for coeducation, I'm very much in favor of that," said Belt. "I think that the College has benefited greatly by that doing that … and the abolition of the fraternity system. It was very hard for the College to do that … As an undergraduate at Williams in 1952, I voted to abolish the fraternities there."
Belt has also witnessed change in the College's academic mission-a change from a core curriculum to an open curriculum system. "From 1978 to 1994, I taught a freshman seminar ... [with Professor of History Frederic] Cheyette. That's another reason for the college and not the university-interdisciplinarity-can I make up a word?"
Belt is continuing to work even in his retirement. "I'm in the midst of working on four papers. One is in the process of being published," said Belt. "One has been accepted by a journal in Dublin, Ireland. One is partly written with four co-authors, three are in their 40s, ... youngsters."
The current director of Pratt Museum, Belt also intends to assist the College in the opening of the new geology building. "I'm planning to help the College move the collection to the new museum," he said. "I know where the skeletons in the closets are … literally."
Calling Converse home
Since the construction of Robert Frost Library in the 1960s and the conversion of Converse Memorial Library into Converse Hall, the office of 211 Converse has been occupied by one man-Professor of Economics Ralph Beals. "It's a long time to spend in one place," said Beals. "The building had been just remodeled and made into a place with offices. Most of the senior faculty in the department took offices on the third floor. I was lucky enough to get this one."
Beals, the Clarence Francis Professor of Economics, received his B.A. from the University of Kentucky in 1958, his M.A. from Northwestern in 1959 and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970.
Beals first joined the faculty of the College in 1962. "[I started teaching because] I thought I'd like it," he said.
After his first year at Amherst, Beals considered other career directions. "I was urged by my professors that I might enjoy teaching graduate students," he said. "So I left and went to Northwestern, where I did teach nothing but graduate students; then the College tried to convince me to come back. [I came back to the College because] I liked Amherst better than where I was." Beals returned to the College in 1966.
Over the years, while the College has undergone a number of demographic changes, Beals has seen little change in the classroom. "Having women in the classroom has been good for the College," said Beals. "[But it] hasn't changed anything in the classroom. [Women students] are just as competent as any man. The atmosphere of the College as a whole has improved.
Despite being an important administrative move, the abolition of fraternities has not significantly altered the College's social scene, according to Beals. "Doing away with fraternities hasn't had a big change as far as I'm concerned," he said. "I keep hearing about fraternities that still exist. I think it is a good move, but it hasn't changed things hugely."
In his retirement, Beals hopes to do more reading and intends to leave the Valley, at least for part of the year. "I'll be spending one half of the year in Amherst and the other half in Florida," said Beals. "As a consequence, I'll be staying warmer. "I'm sure I'll do some traveling, but I don't have a fixed agenda for that, yet."
From England to New England
"I grew up in England and received my first degree from London University. New England and Amherst were a lot more familiar to me, there was something very attractive about a small New England college," said Eliza J. Clark Folger Professor of English Richard Cody of his decision to come teach at the College in 1963. It was the influence of his colleagues that persuaded him to stay for the next 38 years. "When I came here, I was extraordinarily impressed by the quality of my colleagues in English-Theodore Baird G. Armour Craig-they were extraordinary," said Cody. "I had never met teachers who were so interesting and so intelligent ... Just coming to terms for the first time with their idea of an English curriculum was a further education for me. I was a very great admirer of these two members and I was happy to stay."
Cody completed his undergraduate education at the University of London and came to the United States to complete his post-doctoral work at the University of Minnesota.
Six years after his arrival in Amherst, Cody wrote a book titled "The Landscape of the Mind: Pastoralism and Platonic Theory in Tasso's Aminta and Shakespeare's Early Comedies," which garnered him the honor of becoming the first scholarly librarian of the College. As librarian, he created the Newsletter of the Friends of the Amherst College Library, began the biennial library fellows program, and chaired the search committee to hire the current librarian, Willis Bridegam.
At the same time, Cody continued to be an active presence in the English department, serving as chair from 1970-72. In addition to teaching courses on 16th and 17th century literature, his specialty, Cody created two new courses on the literature of the Great War and the art of film. "He taught two incredibly popular courses," said Professor of English Bill Pritchard. "One was the literature of the Great War and the other was Film Noir. He was also involved in teaching the first course in film in the 1960s."
"In the 1950s I was the first member of the faculty to argue in a chapel talk for film study and, with junior colleagues, to offer a course in it," said Cody in a statement to President Tom Gerety.
Cody's most recent accomplishment is a fiction piece, which he wrote during his sabbatical this semester. "It's about 400 pages, I'm writing the last 100 now. It's transitional for me, it's how I've kept myself happy giving up writing papers. It's an autobiographical fiction, I don't know if it will be published, it doesn't matter," said Cody.
"I also play tennis, golf, and work in the yard," he added. Cody has retired to Alabama, far from the high teas of his British upbringing in England.
Cody will be missed by his colleagues in the English department. "We taught together here for almost 40 years, particularly in staff courses at the freshmen and sophomore level," said Pritchard.
"We made up cooperative assignments and had weekly meetings together; I remember most how devoted and original he was in making up assignments and asking questions about literature," he added. "He is an extremely learned, erudite man who has a very strong knowledge and appreciation of classic English literature and literature in other languages."