Partings
Penn State Intercom......March
29, 2001
Hershey says goodbye
to 'founding member'
Dorothy M. Ecklund, administrative assistant and "founding member" of the Department of Pediatrics at The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, officially turned over the pediatric administrative reins to another in September.
Ecklund has spent 30 years, from September 1970 to September 2000, working in the Department of Pediatrics.
She has been a member of the Association of Administrators in Academic Pediatrics since its inception in 1984, attending the annual meetings of administrators from teaching hospitals and universities throughout the United States. She also has served on the Employee of the Month Selection Committee at the medical center since its inception in 1983.
Ecklund and her husband, Stanley Frederick, are celebrating her retirement with a trip through Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
Engineering professor retires
with emeritus status 
William Thompson Jr., professor of engineering science, has retired with emeritus statusafter 34 years.
Thompson came to the University in 1966 as a research assistant at the Applied Research Laboratory. He received his doctorate in engineering acoustics from Penn State in 1971 and joined the engineering science and mechanics faculty in 1972. In 1973 he became a member of the faculty of the graduate acoustics program. Thompson also served as head of the Transducer Group at ARL from 1971 to 1980.
In recent years, Thompson served as his department's undergraduate officer and represented his department in the College of Engineering's Undergraduate Advising Office and Cooperative Education Office. He regularly participated in the First Year Testing, Counseling and Advising Program and was the editor of his department's advising guide. At the University level, Thompson helped evaluate applicants for the Schreyer Honors College. From 1996 to 1997, he served as chairperson of the IBM Master Teacher Team.
Thompson received the Penn State Engineering Society's Outstanding Teaching Award in 1984, the PSES Premier Teaching Award in 1993 and the PSES Outstanding Advising Award in 1998.