The University of California, Davis, will dedicate its Dramatic Art Building to Professor Emerita Celeste Turner Wright, the first woman to hold a tenured faculty appointment at UC Davis, during a ceremony Thursday, Oct. 9. Wright can boast of a number of UC Davis "firsts" in addition to the tenured appointment: she was the first female faculty member with a Ph.D., first humanist to receive the Faculty Research Lecturer Award, first drama instructor and first director of plays. And she is one of the first women to have a building at UC Davis bear her name; only two others do: Gladys J. Everson Hall and Susan F. and William M. Regan Hall. The dedication ceremony will be held in the Dramatic Art Building courtyard at 11 a.m. It will include a presentation of Wright's poems "Campus Doorways" and "Folktale," both set to music by Jerome Rosen, professor emeritus of music. "Campus Doorways" will be performed by the UCD Symphony Orchestra, conducted by D. Kern Holoman, and by the University Chorus and Chamber Singers, directed by Jeffrey Thomas. "Folktale" will be performed by the chorus. Speakers will include Rosen; Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef; JoAnn Cannon, dean of humanities, arts and cultural studies; Karl Zender, chair of the English department; and Robert Hopkins professor emeritus of English. Janelle Reinelt, chair of dramatic art and dance, will give a poetry reading, and Wright will also give remarks. In a letter to Wright earlier this year, Vanderhoef wrote, "The quality and quantity of your contributions to the Davis campus, particularly the programs in English and dramatic art, have been extraordinary, and naming the Dramatic Art Building 'Celeste Turner Wright Hall' is one tangible way in which the campus can say 'thank you' for your exceptional work as a faculty member and department chair." When Wright came to Davis, she was 22 years old and had just completed her doctorate at UC Berkeley. For the next 51 years, from 1928 to 1979, Wright was an active member of the English department, teaching, writing, researching and working with students. She served as head of the Division of English in 1928-34 and as chair of the Division of Languages and Literature in 1934-52. In 1952, with the establishment of the College of Letters and Science, she was appointed chair of the Department of English, Dramatic Art and Speech, a position she held for three years. She is a widely published scholar of English Renaissance literature and a frequently published poet. One of her books of poems, "A Sense of Place," won a Commonwealth Club of California medal. She also created and eventually endowed the annual Celeste Turner Wright Poetry Prize for undergraduates, conducted under the auspices of the Academy of American Poets. In addition, Wright was one of the campus's first drama instructors; she directed student plays, at least one a semester, from the start of her academic career, and she occasionally taught a course in drama. Dramatic art courses and productions were considered the English department's responsibility until what is now dramatic art and dance became a separate department in 1961. The recommendation to name a building after Wright was initiated by the English department and endorsed by the dramatic art and dance department. It was then approved at the campus level by the Board on the Naming of UCD Properties, Programs and Facilities and the Council of Deans and Vice Chancellors before it was forwarded to UC President Richard Atkinson. Zender pointed out in the nomination that the current state of building names on campus argued strongly in support of Wright's candidacy. When Wright came to Davis as the first female Ph.D., only eight out of 350 students were women. UC Davis is now a campus with approximately equal numbers of male and female students and increasing numbers of female faculty members. "Naming a building after Professor Wright will acknowledge and support this transformation in a public, ceremonial and enduring fashion," Zender said.