Philip S. Denenfeld
May 5, 2000
Dr. Philip S. Denenfeld, Western Michigan University provost
and vice president emeritus for academic affairs, died May 4
in Kalamazoo. He was 76.
Denenfeld retired from WMU at the end of 1986, after 30 years
of service to the University as a faculty member and administrator.
He first joined the faculty in 1956 as an assistant professor
of English. During the next three decades, he held the positions
of associate professor, professor, associate dean in the College
of Arts and Sciences, and associate vice president for academic
affairs.
Denenfeld was named vice president for academic affairs in
1983. He also served as acting president of WMU for a brief period,
between the retirement of Dr. John Bernhard and the arrival of
Dr. Diether H. Haenicke, the University's fourth and fifth presidents.
Denenfeld headed a wide array of University task forces and
committees, and he was active in a number of national organizations,
including serving as an accrediting consultant/examiner for the
North Central Association. He was chairperson from 1983 to 1985
of the Coordinating Council for the Kalamazoo Consortium of Higher
Education and a member of the board of directors of MERIT, a
statewide computer network. A longtime member of the Michigan
Civil Liberties Union, he served as vice chairperson of that
organization from 1963 to 1965 and from 1973 to 1980.
Denenfeld also served for a period on the national staff of
the Washington, D.C., office of the American Association of University
Professors and was the first chairperson of the AAUP's Special
Committee on Junior and Community Colleges. Active as a consultant
on such topics as governance and faculty-administration relations,
Denenfeld advised a number of other colleges and universities,
including Rutgers University, St. Mary's College, Virginia Polytechnic
Institute, the State University of New York at Binghamton and
the University of Michigan Center for the Study of Higher Education.
A native of the Highland Park, Mich., Denenfeld earned a bachelor's
degree from Wayne State University in 1950 and master's and doctoral
degrees from Northwestern University in 1951 and 1957, respectively.
A special memorial service will be held Sunday, May 7, in
the Dalton Center Recital Hall beginning at 1 p.m. Memorial gifts
may be sent to the WMU Foundation for the Philip S. Denenfeld
Memorial Scholarship.
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