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Memoir
Orlando W. Stephenson
Regent's Proceedings 299
Regent's Proceedings 299
Thirty-eight years ago Orlando W. Stephenson, a graduate in 1908 of Michigan State College with the degree of B.S. in Civil Engineering, and recipient of the M.A. degree from the University of Chicago in 1915, came to the University of Michigan as Assistant in History in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts.
In 1919 he earned the Ph.D. degree in history at this University and became Instructor in that subject. From 1925 to 1954 Dr. Stephenson was on the faculty of the School of Education, where he became Professor of the Teaching of History and Head of the Social Studies Department in the University High School.
Professor Stephenson has shown extraordinary capacity to succeed in various kinds of activities besides teaching. These include bridge construction, farming, editing of historical material, playwriting, high school administration, detection of forged documents, and police administration.
He served from 1939 to 1945 as Police Commissioner of Ann Arbor and was Chairman of the Commission from 1942 to 1945. Although most of his published work is in the field of social studies, including the volume Everyday Economics, a Study of Practices and Principles (with C. C. Janzen), Dr. Stephenson also has written articles on reading ability, teaching methods, and crime prevention. In 1927 he wrote a history of the City of Ann Arbor under the title Ann Arbor, The First Hundred Years.
Dr. Stephenson has been a most active person throughout his life, having traveled very extensively in all parts of the world in connection with his study of police administration. He has been called upon frequently as an expert witness with respect to questioned documents.
Now that on August 19, 1954. Professor Stephenson has reached his seventieth birthday and has become eligible for retirement under our bylaws, the Regents of the University assure him of their deep appreciation of his important service and extend to him their cordial felicitations good wisher. They further confer upon him the title Professor Emeritus of the Teaching of History and invite him to avail himself of all the courtesies customarily shown to emeritus members of the faculty.