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(April 12, 2001, Gazette)
Remembrances of Memorial past...

30 years ago
Accounting courses
April 1971 — Five-year accreditation courses in accounting, offered by the Certified General Accountants’ Association, are being taken by several members of the Comptroller’s Office. William F. Stapleton, administrative officer (finance) in the medical school, has successfully completed his final examinations. Other staff members in the Comptroller’s Office are taking the basic accounting course offered by the Extension Service.

25 years ago
University has $2.5 million deficit
April 1976 — In an open letter to the university community, President M. O. Morgan says the provincial government grant leaves the university with a shortfall of about $2.5 million. He notes that it is impossible for any university to adjust itself to such a reduction in its level of expenditure in one fiscal year, but says that every possible way will be sought to reduce the cost of operation and seek out additional revenues, including considering raising tuition fees.

In other news, the Maritime History Group, under the chairmanship of Dr. Keith Matthews, is awarded a $733,000 program grant by the Canada Council to examine the rise and fall of the shipping industry in eastern Canada and its effects on the social and economic history of the area. The project will be funded over a five-year period.

20 years ago
Bartlett Building opened
April 1981 — Memorial’s newest building officially opens this month. The Captain Robert A. Bartlett Building is located on the north campus overlooking Long Pond across the street from the School of Business, and houses the Centre for Cold Ocean Resources Engineering, the Ocean Engineering Information Centre and Instrumar Limited.

15 years ago
Major equipment grant
April 1986 — At a time when only 20 per cent of research applications are successful, five members of Memorial’s Department of Chemistry are awarded $150,000 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) towards the purchase of a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer. Drs. Murray Brooks, Jean Burnell, Alex Fallis, Brian Gregory and Chet Jablonski will receive additional support from university sources to match that from NSERC. The new spectrometer allows scientists to measure the energy required to reverse the direction in which a nucleus points, and from this derive information regarding which nuclei are present in a sample and in what way they chemically interact with each other.

In other good news for science at Memorial, Dr. John Brosnan, Biochemistry, is the winner of the 1986 Borden Award in Nutrition for his fundamental contributions to scientific knowledge of amino acid metabolism and in particular for work which has established the important role of the kidney in amino acid metabolism and nutrition. And Memorial geophysicist Dr. Michael Rochester is named winner of the Tuzo Wilson Medal by the Canadian Geophysical Union. The medal is the highest award made by the CGU and is in recognition of Dr. Rochester’s contribution to the theoretical geophysics of the earth’s liquid core.

10 years ago
Cutbacks implemented
April 1991 — The university eliminates another 67.5 positions this month in an effort to cope with the estimated $8 million shortfall in its operating budget from the provincial government. This brings the total number of job eliminations to 121. Of the positions eliminated so far, about 17 per cent are management-level. The Art Gallery is hard hit by budget cuts, and will close its doors to the public for three months this year and cancel at least nine exhibitions in order to cope.

In good news, science and engineering research funding tops $4.8 million as Memorial researchers in a variety of science and engineering disciplines succeed in obtaining grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. This is about 19 per cent more than the amount received in the same competition last year.
And Canada’s first complete composite skeleton of a great auk is officially unveiled this month at the inaugural Great Auk Lecture. The skeleton, which will be housed at the Centre for Newfoundland Studies and shared with the Newfoundland Museum, was constructed at the National Museum of Natural Sciences with bones found on Funk Island in recent years by Memorial University researchers and in the 19th century by U.S. fisheries biologists.