Presidential Citation
Adele Stern
Adjunct Faculty Member
Anthony J. Petrocelli College of Continuing Studies
Quintessential teacher, you joined Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1988. Your life had already been a full one but, not inclined to rest on your laurels, you welcomed new challenges and opportunities.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, you joined The Lear School in Miami, Florida, in the early 1940s. Despite a successfully developing career, and to the surprise of friends and family, in 1944 you joined the American Red Cross to “do your part” in the World War II effort.
Your albums and letters home recounted your war-time experiences from Paris, where you arrived just after the liberation of France; to Belgium, where you attended to soldiers close to the line of battle; and to Germany, where you witnessed the evacuation of the Dachau concentration camp and the Nuremberg war trials. Upon your return to the states, you married, raised three children and taught and administered in the New Jersey public school system.
Your FDU career has been as varied as the other phases of your rich life. Well known to Peter and Sally Sammartino, you came to the University as director of the Williams Institute for Aesthetic Education — spearheading a program to instruct elementary and high school teachers on the arts. You continued your work with public school educators through the direction of FDU’s Arts in Education Program, and you have been a full participant in the University’s Core curriculum, even teaching the program in Israel.
For a lifetime of teaching, for exposing your friends, your family and, most of all, your students to the arts you dearly love, I gratefully present you this Presidential Citation.
By and on behalf of the University Community,
J. Michael Adams
September 28, 2005
