During World War II, Richard F. Noland (BA 1948) interrupted his chemical engineering studies at the U for service in the army medical corps, with a burn unit based in England. He occasionally flew in silent gliders to France to rescue wounded from the battlefield for plane transport back to the station hospital. When he returned to the U, he revisited the University Testing Bureau, where he'd been assessed as an underclassman. Recounts his wife, author Jane Thomas Noland: "Retests showed that not only Dick's interests, but his aptitudes, had done a complete about-face--to the bafflement of the head researcher, who blamed Dick for messing up his study."
Noland switched his major to English. "Maybe during those years when he was stationed in England near Stonehenge, that country's long history of honoring writers seeped into his consciousness," suggests Jane mischievously. Or perhaps it was the influence of his mother, Felix Noland, a passionate reader and a writer of short stories published in national publications in the 1930s and '40s.
Noland did not give up his curiosity about science and engineering, which continued as a lifelong fascination with tools, with how things work, with well-made practical objects. But in the rich symbolism and language of literature, he found "a basis for communication in all fields, including science and technology," Jane reveals. He used that common well of knowledge as a successful advertising copywriter and concept developer with BBDO, at Campbell Mithun, and for two decades at his own business. And he valued it enough to create a fellowship in his former major department--to, as Jane describes, "help boost the role of English literature at a time when the excitement and economic advantages of technology and scientific discoveries in many educational institutions seemed to be sweeping aside those broader liberal arts."
The Richard F. Noland Fellowship in English was established before Noland died in 2009, at the age of 86. Appropriately, it has provided English doctoral students with the "invaluable time," as recent recipient Michael Rowe relates, to read widely. "I think that reading helped shape everything that came after: my exams, the beginnings of my dissertation, and my teaching," he acknowledges.
According to his wife, Noland relished the experience of being an English major when courses were taught by the likes of Saul Bellow and Robert Penn Warren, Shakespearean scholar Elmer E. Stoll, and "the fiery Elizabeth Jackson." The Noland Fellowship in turn allows first-year graduate students the opportunity to savor the full benefit of classroom instruction. "The freedom that the Noland Fellowship offers is not necessarily freedom from teaching," declares current graduate student Wesley Burdine, "since I love being in the classroom. Rather, it offers the students a freedom to immerse themselves in their work. The Noland Fellowship provided a brief respite for me to study and spend time as a student, not just a future educator."
Explains Jane, herself once an English major (at Smith College), "Establishing this fellowship was his way of honoring those graduate scholars who were preserving and passing along the traditions of English literature, the architecture of words and ideas, our essential ways of communicating."
For Noland, English was at the center of "those broader liberal arts" and provided a springy platform for a life of joyful exploration. As his obituary affirmed, "He was an ad man, but also a magician, piano player, riverboat captain of the restored Vagabond, all-around craftsman, occasional prankster, news junkie, scientific kite-flyer, storyteller, swimmer and windsurfer, tennis player, soda jerk, and Dr. Doolittle-like communicator with animals, especially dogs." Noland could not be bound by a single set of attributes and interests. In English he honed foundational skills of comprehension, analysis, and communication that could be utilized wherever his feet took him.
An early member of the Department of English's Advisory Board, Noland was shocked at one meeting when a businessman asked bluntly, "Well, really, what can you do with an English major?" Jane remembers her husband's reaction: "What CAN'T you do with an English major?"
This story is part of a series on English graduate student fellowships, which has also covered the Mary Sue Comfort, Ruth Drake Dissertation, Martin B. Ruud, and Klaeber Fund Fellowships.
Help support English students online or by phone, through CLA Development Officer Shannon Wolkerstorfer at 612-626-5064.
