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James P. Crawford, professor of mathematics, died May 8 in Easton Hospital at age 68. The current Lafayette faculty member with the longest continuous service, he taught at the College since 1957.
Crawford joined the Lafayette faculty as an instructor of mathematics. He earned a master’s degree in mathematics from Lehigh in 1961 and was promoted to assistant professor in 1964. He completed a doctorate at Lehigh in 1966. He was promoted to associate professor in 1968, and to full professor in 1994.
“Jim Crawford’s record of service to Lafayette is both long and distinguished. Few have enriched the education of as many students as he did in a career that spanned almost half a century,” said Lafayette President Arthur J. Rothkopf. “His friends and colleagues in the faculty and administration will miss him, as will our students and the many alumni who remember him fondly.”
In 1998 he was honored for “extraordinarily successful teaching” by the Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware section of the Mathematical Association of America. He was the recipient of the association’s Distinguished Teaching Award, which is presented annually for excellence in teaching and influence beyond the recipient’s own institution.
In 1966, Crawford received Lafayette’s Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Faculty Lecture Award recognizing excellence in teaching and scholarship. In 1967 he received the College’s Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for distinguished teaching and outstanding contributions to campus life. In 1981, students voted him the recipient of the Student Government Award for Superior Teaching. He was head of the mathematics department from 1985-91.
A major annual Lafayette teaching award bears Crawford’s name. Established in 1993 through a grant from Jonathan R. Bernon, a 1984 Lafayette graduate from Woodbury, Conn., the James P. Crawford Award is given annually to a faculty member who has demonstrated a high standard of classroom instruction. The prize consists of $500 for the recipient and an additional $500 going to the recipient’s department to enhance teaching.
In 1966 he taught a six-week summer institute in math for junior and senior high school teachers supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Born Feb. 8, 1935, Crawford was a native of Brookville, Pa., and a graduate of Brookville High School. In 1957 he graduated with a bachelor of arts degree from Grove City College, Grove City, Pa. He was elected to Omicron Delta Kappa, a national leadership honor society for college students, faculty, staff, administrators, and alumni that recognizes and encourages superior scholarship, leadership, and exemplary character.
As a senior at Grove City he was president of the college chapter of Theta Alpha Phi, the national honorary fraternity for theater arts, and during his career at Lafayette was a well-known amateur actor in campus and community theater groups.
Memorial gifts may be made to Lafayette for the McKelvy House Scholars Program.