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Multiple professors retire

Quandt, Kett, Onuf, Osheim, Frieson leave the University at semester's end

As the semester draws to a close, some familiar faces will be leaving the University.

Politics Prof. William Quandt will make his way to retirement after 20 years of teaching. Before coming to the University, Quandt participated in the 1978 Camp David Accords and served as a member of President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Council during the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty in 1979.

“[In my time at the University,] I think I built up the number of students interested in Middle East politics,” Quandt said. “I also helped to get international programs on the agenda when I was Vice Provost for International Affairs.”

Quandt plans to stay involved in academic affairs and occasionally teach a course at the University, but said he hopes to take the opportunity to expand his horizons.

Three professors will leave the history department this spring. Prof. Joseph Kett said health problems in recent years have forced him to miss time in the classroom.

“It is time,” he said. “Teaching at U.Va. has placed me within a lively intellectual community in an outstanding department. Looking back, I have managed to interest many undergraduates in the study of history, a subject most of them seem to have dreaded in high school.”

Kett has directed nearly 25 doctoral dissertations, more than half of which have been subsequently published as books.

History Prof. Peter Onuf, will also retire after the semester ends.

“I’m old enough to retire comfortably, and I have a lot of things to keep me busy,” Onuf said in an email. “[I am] making the BackStory radio program, making an ‘Age of Jefferson’ [Massive Open Online Course] for the University and Monticello, tending to my graduate students, serving as a senior fellow in residence at Monticello, and writing a book with a good friend on Jefferson’s intellectual and emotional life.”

History Prof. Duane Osheim also announced he will leave this spring, along with Biology Prof. Otto Friesen.

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