It is a sad duty to report the death of Professor Walter Benjamin Sanders, former Chairman of the Department of Architecture, on the nineteenth of March at the age of sixty-five.

Professor Sanders earned bachelor and master's degrees in architecture from the universities of Illinois and Pennsylvania respectively, and, before joining the faculty here, taught at Columbia University and the Pratt Institute and practiced in New York City. From 1936 to 1938, he was Associate Editor of the magazines American Architect and Architectural Forum. Joining the Air Force during the Second World War, he rose to lieutenant colonel and won a number of military honors. His association with The University of Michigan began in 1947, when he accepted a visiting lectureship here though without severing his New York ties. The University appointed him Professor of Architecture in 1949, and for three terms, from 1954 to 1964, Chairman of the Department of Architecture.

In his College, Professor Sanders helped align the curriculum in architecture more precisely with current professional practice, using as one of his instruments the new Doctor of Architecture program, which he himself had conceived and planned. His faculty colleagues expressed their confidence in his judgment by electing him to the Executive Board of the Graduate School and the Advisory Committee of the University Senate, as well as to the Executive Committee of his own College. In 1969 the University fittingly conferred on him its Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award. He reaped, as well, professional honors at every stage of his career; he was raised to Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1963 and won the Gold Medal of the Michigan Society of Architects in the following year.

His immediate peers in the College of Architecture and Design are deeply grieved by the loss of his professional talents and of his attractive and inspiring personal presence. The Regents of the University now also mourn the untimely cutting off of this dedicated life. They honor the memory of Walter Sanders, and extend to Mrs. Sanders their heartfelt sympathy.