Gen Ed A Boss, Harold Martin, Named Union College's President

Harold C. Martin, lecturer on Comparative Literature and director of Gen Ed Ahf for the last thirteen years, has been appointed president of Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., it was announced yesterday.

The 48-year-old author of two leading textbooks used by colleges throughout the country in freshman writing courses will succeed Carter Davidson, Union's president for 19 years, who will become president of the Association of American Colleges.

Beginning July 1, Martin will also serve as chancellor of Union University, which includes Albany Medical School, Albany Law School, the Dudley Observatory, and the Albany School of Pharmacy.

Martin came to Harvard in 1950 until last June. His textbooks, Logic and Rhetoric of Exposition and inquiry and Expression, have been used in the course since 1959.

"No matter what students think of Gen Ed A," Martin said yesterday of the compulsory course, "it has done its job well."

He recently completed service as chairman of a special committee of the College Entrance Examination Board, which examined the condition from his position as a high school principal in Goshen, N.Y., and he received his Ph.D. in 1954. He graduated from Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y. in 1937 and received an A.M. from the University of Michigan in 1942.

As a candidate for the Ph.D., Martin was appointed a Teaching Fellow in English A in 1951. When it was changed to General Education A the following year, he became director and remained in that position of secondary school English courses and developed summer institutes and new teaching materials for high school instructors. These programs were recently taken over by the U.S. Office of Education.

Last spring Martin was a visiting professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. He gave Comp Lit 153. "Crosscurrents of Romanticism," and English 213. "The Development of English Prose Style," last semester. He is currently offering English 279, "The American Historical Romance," and English 172. "American Fiction from the Beginnings to Present," which drew 450 people to its first lecture on Tuesday