The Regents of the University of Michigan hereby extend to James Bartlett Edmonson their cordial felicitations upon his attainment of his seventieth birthday, on December 28, 1952, and his consequent eligibility for retirement from active service to the University for which he has labored for so many years and with such effectiveness.

Dean Edmonson was graduated from Michigan in 1906 and was granted the A.M. degree in 1910, subsequently gaining the doctorate in philosophy at Chicago in 1925. After eight years of teaching and administrative work in the public schools of this state, he returned to the University in 1914 as Professor of Education and Inspector of High Schools, and in 1929 he was chosen Dean of the School of Education.

There are few indeed in this or any other state who have acquired so extensive and so direct a knowledge of the nature and problems of education in this country, or who have enjoyed so wide an acquaintance among educators as Dean Edmonson.

Amply endowed with practical wisdom and possessed of a personality which invites friendship and trust, Dean Edmonson has been called upon to take part in scores of important activities under the sponsorship of state, regional, and national agencies, and his influence has been exerted quietly but powerfully in many directions.

The School of Education has advanced notably under his leadership; he has held the presidency of the North Central Association of Secondary Schools and Colleges, of the Michigan Schoolmasters' Club, and of the Horace Mann League, is co-chairman of the Canada-United States Committee on Education, and has been a member of numerous educational commissions, including the National Commission on Emergency in Education and the Educational Policies Commission.

He has written or contributed to the authorship of a long list of books, and his articles have frequently appeared in educational journals. The good services that he has performed for the benefit of individual students and alumni, for the School of Education and the University of Michigan, and for the general public are so many and so diverse that it would be futile to attempt their enumeration.

The Regents therefore gratefully acknowledge the University's indebtedness to this loyal alumnus of Michigan and confer upon him the title Dean Emeritus of the School of Education and Professor Emeritus of Secondary Education, as of February 7, 1953, inviting him to avail himself of all the courtesies customarily extended to emeritus members of the faculty.