Lecture to honor late professor

For 30 years, James P. Holland served IU as a biology professor and recruiting and interim dean of the Graduate School.\nKnown as Jim to his friends, faculty and the over 11,000 students he taught, his career with IU ended March 24, 1998, when he died of cancer.\nA series of lectures dedicated in his honor will begin today at 4 p.m. in the Whittenberger Auditorium of the Indiana Memorial Union. The lecture is free and open to the public.\n"Jim Holland was about teaching and learning, that was the heart of who he was," said Charlie Nelms, vice president for student development and diversity. "Jim Holland always had time for students ... he didn't see them as being an inconvenience. They gave him his real charge."\nNelms' office, along with the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Multicultural Affairs and the Department of Biology, are sponsoring the lecture series.\n"The fact that the lecture is sponsored by three departments depicts the influence of James Holland," said Associate Vice Chancellor for Multicultural Affairs Gloria Gibson. "He touched many, many departments and many, many lives."\nThe inaugural lecture will be presented by Homer A. Neal, interim president emeritus and vice president emeritus for research at the University of Michigan and a former IU professor. He is currently researching experimental high-energy physics at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, while maintaining a research position at Michigan. He will speak on "Science in the New Millennium."\n"Neal is probably one of the most distinguished scientists that the campus has had, and is very influential in national scientific circles," said Chancellor and Vice President for Academic Affairs Kenneth Gros Louis.\nAt the lecture, Gros Louis will present the Chancellor's Medallion to Holland's widow, Connie, a Bloomington High School South teacher. Holland officially received the award in 1997, but at the time the actual medal had not yet been struck.\nGros Louis said the medal is cast out of silver, with a depiction of Showalter Fountain on the front and an image of the Student Building clock tower and an open book on the back.\n "It will be my pleasure to present the medal to Connie. She has been one of the best teachers at Bloomington South," Gros Louis said. "Both of the Hollands have spent lives of significant commitment to young people."\n The Department of Biology has also created a graduate fellowship in Holland's honor, which provides a first-year doctoral student stipend, tuition and health insurance during their first year of training.\n Al Ruesink, a biology professor and friend of Holland, said a lecture series, rather than a physical object, was the right way to commemorate Holland.\n "Jim was a person who always wanted people to learn, and you don't learn on a continuing basis from a fountain or a tree," Ruesink said. "It also provides a chance for those of us who were his friends to get together and remember him"