The quality and quantity of your contributions to the Davis campus . . . have been extraordinary.

BUILDING NAME A Wright Decision Celeste Turner Wright can boast a number of UC Davis "firsts": first woman faculty member with a Ph.D., first woman in the tenure track, first humanist to receive the Faculty Research Lecturer Award, first drama instructor and first director of plays. At the age of 91, she has made history again: A campus building has been named in her honor. While she's not exactly the first woman to have a building named after her, the honor is close enough for "pioneer status." Only two other buildings at UC Davis bear the names of women--Gladys J. Everson Hall and Susan F. and William M. Regan Hall. Wright learned firsthand from Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef earlier this year that UC President Richard Atkinson approved his recommendation that the Dramatic Art Building carry the professor emerita's name. "The quality and quantity of your contributions to the Davis campus, particularly the programs in English and dramatic art, have been extraordinary, and naming the Dramatic Art Building 'Celeste Turner Wright Hall' is one tangible way in which the campus can say 'thank you' for your exceptional work as a faculty member and department chair," Vanderhoef said in a letter. The building will be formally dedicated on Oct. 9 at 11 a.m. The dedication, to be held in the Main Theatre, will include a ribbon-cutting and a reading of Wright's poem "Campus Doorways," set to music by Jerome Rosen, professor emeritus of music. Karl Zender, chair of the English department, recommended in a letter last fall to Vanderhoef that a building be named in Wright's honor. When Wright came to Davis, she was 22 years old and had just completed her doctorate at UC Berkeley. For the next 51 years, from 1928 to 1979, Wright was an active member of the English department, teaching, writing, researching and working with students. She chaired the department for 27 years. Wright also directed student plays, at least one a semester, from the start of her academic career, and she occasionally taught a course in drama. Dramatic art courses and productions were considered the English department's responsibility until what is now dramatic art and dance became a separate department in 1961. Zender pointed out that when Wright came to Davis as the first female Ph.D., only eight out of 350 students were women. UC Davis is now a campus with approximately equal numbers of male and female students and increasing numbers of female faculty members. "Naming a building after Professor Wright will acknowledge and support this transformation in a public, ceremonial and enduring fashion," Zender said.