Please join the Department of English and the College of Arts & Sciences at a retirement reception honoring Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor Sandra Donaldson on Tuesday, April 24, from 4 to 6:30 p.m. at the North Dakota Museum of Art (program to begin at 4:30).  She will retire at the end of the spring 2012 semester.

Dr. Donaldson earned a B.A. in 1968 from State University of New York at Buffalo, and then a M.A. in 1970 and a Ph.D. in 1977 from the University of Connecticut.  When Donaldson became a member of the UND faculty in 1977, she was one of just a few women in the Department of English.  During her time at UND, she has not only witnessed many changes, but also helped to push them further.  She helped to found the Women Studies program and was awarded the Outstanding Faculty Award for Development and Service, as well as the UND Foundation/Thomas J. Clifford Faculty Achievement Award for Excellence in Research.  She was named a Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor in 2004.

Donaldson is an internationally renowned scholar of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who has been awarded multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.  As one person put it, “It is not possible for anyone in the world to work with Elizabeth Barrett Browning and not consult Sandra Donaldson's work. Her preeminence in the field grows from nearly three decades of steady, productive, focused work."  Pickering & Chatto published her five volume scholarly edition, The Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in 2010.

Please join us in thanking Dr. Donaldson for her thirty-five years of service, teaching, and research at UND.  Also, please join us in honoring her dedication to our University, the Grand Forks community, and the state of North Dakota.  We wish her well in her retirement.