Morris G. Cline

Cline retired July 1, 2003 from the Department of Plant Biology where he had been a faculty member since 1968. Cline, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, said "My working years at OSU essentially have been demarcated by the two national football championships, in 1968 with Woody Hayes, Rex Kern and the team in their glory and the recent 2003 team. As a Michigan alumnus, when I arrived in 1968, I did not know if I could ever become a true Buckeye fan, but my conversion came quickly!"

Cline, a plant physiologist, studied environmental and hormonal control of differentiation, including the effects of light and temperature on plant growth and development and the role of RNA synthesis in hormone activity.

His present interest is the role of apical dominance in branching herbaceous plants and trees; he studies branching mutants in various plant species as well as sylleptic branching in hybrid poplar clones and has a U.S. Forest Service grant to study the mechanisms of branching in woody species. His hope is to understand the control mechanisms down to the molecular level. "I remember the excitement of involvement in the organization of the college's interdisciplinary Developmental Biology (now MCDB) graduate program," Cline said. "Tom Byers, Roy Tassava, Don Dougall, I and others were part of the first year of that program."

Cline taught several plant biology courses and will continue to teach one course per year for the Plant Biology Department. He trained several graduate students and is known for his work mentoring undergraduate student researchers. He has been active in the American Society of Plant Physiologists, published numerous papers and served on a wide variety of university committees.

Cline, who spent virtually his entire career in B&Z, recounts a funny story about the building, "In 1983, Professor Ron Stuckey told me of a recent phone conversation which he had with the daughter of Professor William A. Kellerman, the chair of the Botany Department from 1891 to 1908. She was in her 90s and living in California at the time of the phone conversation. When Ron mentioned the Botany & Zoology Building to her, she said something to the effect of, 'Oh! You mean the new building!'" (From 1884 to 1914, botany was located in Botanical Hall, the present site of the Faculty Club.)

Ted Cavender

Cavender retired July 1, 2003 from the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology. Cavender, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, is, among other things, the curator of the Division of Fishes for the Museum of Zoology. His research has been funded extensively by ODNR, the US Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and Ohio Sea Grant, among others. He is the author of numerous papers and articles, given countless presentations and invited seminars, has served as consultant to industry, education and government organizations, and trained dozens of graduate students, most of whom now have productive careers as research scientists and academics.

Like most EEOB faculty members, Cavender did his time in B&Z, before he moved to Sullivant Hall and then to the Museum of Biological Diversity on Kinnear Rd. He vividly remembers, "when the old zoology department was headquartered in the basement of B&Z; the spring of 1970, with the tear-gas floating by my windows; and the female gingko tree behind B&Z that stank to heaven," that he suspects was deliberately planted as a prank by one of the botanists.

Cavender will continue as curator of the Museum of Zoology's more than 1,900,000 fish, because he says, "I'm stuck on fish...and it has to be done." He will not continue to teach, having as he said, "established an endurance record for teaching Zoology 626, the Biology of Fishes, for 33 years!" He also taught for 12 summers at Stone Lab.

Additionally, he will do field work and write and complete reports to fulfill contracts with the Division of Wildlife.

But he says, retirement will mean "I can do more of what I want to do-I've been stuck with living fishes during my career, but my main interest is fossil fishes, so I will get to work on those." He plans trips to the western U.S. to collect more specimens, "I've been doing this since 1964; they're easy for me to find, because by now I know where to look!"

-S.R.