Warning to a class: Dr. Donald Hornig (left) the President's top science advisor and this year's speaker, tells the class of 1966 that the learning is just beginning.
A first at Tech: Major and Mrs. Thomas Murray leave the Fox after being among the two couples who received identical degrees.
And still another first: John (left) and Albert Staton, shown below flanking Alumni Association President Matt Cole, became the first dual winners of Tech's top Alumni Distinguished Service Award.
Commencement: 1966—cont. Then the Georgia Tech Glee Club sang the stirring "Hallelujah Chorus" from Beethoven's The Mount of Olives. The conferring of degrees followed. The 1,300 marched one by one up to the stage, gave their cards to either Fred W. Ajax or Dr. James Young, who with stentorian voices, sang out the names, while President Edwin Harrison handed the diplomas and shook hands. Occasionally the pace would be slowed as Mr. Ajax or Dr. Young would stop to tell about one of the three top students: "James Edward Westmoreland, III, from Griffin, Georgia, is a physics major. Mr. Westmoreland is the top student in his class with a 4.0 average out of a 4.0 possible average." (West18
moreland had the highest average of any graduate in ten years, according to Registrar W. L. Carmichael.) "Frederick Raymond Henry, from Augusta, Georgia, graduates with highest honor. He has a 3.9 average." (Henry was an aerospace engineering major.) "David Eugene Arnold, from Glen Burnie, Maryland, graduates with highest honor with a 3.9 average out of a possible 4.0." (Arnold majored in electrical engineering.) Fifteen co-eds walked across the stage for degrees—almost twice as many as in any previous year. There were also two couples graduating: Major Thomas Harold Murray and his wife Jeanne Morris Murray, received Master of Science in Information Science degrees; Stanley LeRoy Tollman and Joan Tomme Tollman
finished together with Bachelor of Science Degrees in Industrial Management. Among the graduates there were 1,011 getting Bachelor's Degrees, 250 receiving Master's Degrees, and 45, Ph.D. Degrees. The Ph.D.'s represented a large portion of the 254 total number of doctorates Tech has granted since 1952, and the 188 since 1960. In his address, Dr. Hornig had made a special point of the numbers of Ph.D. degrees now being granted in Georgia—as a good sign of the educational development of the state. He noted that in the 1940's only the average of one was graduated annually, while now the figure for all schools is about 100. "Of course," he said, "a Georgia student still has only one-third the likelihood of getting a Ph.D. as an TECH ALUMNUS