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R. Oliver Gibson, professor emeritus of education
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday in Canterbury Woods, 705 Renaissance Drive, Amherst, for R. Oliver Gibson, a professor emeritus in the Graduate School of Education who died Nov. 13 in Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital after a lengthy illness. He was 88.
Gibson, or "Ollie" as he was known, received his Ed.D. from Harvard University in 1955 after having served as president of the Nova Scotia Teachers Union in his native Canada.
Gibson joined the UB faculty in 1961 and continued until his retirement in 1984. During his nearly quarter-century tenure, he took on numerous administrative responsibilities at the university and in the field of education, including serving as chair of the Department of Educational Administration, acting dean of the School of Social Policy and Community Services (now the School of Social Work), director of the Clinical Conference for School Personnel Administrators, president of the Collegiate Association for the Development of Educational Administration, and president of the Buffalo chapter of United University Professions, the union representing SUNY faculty and professional staff.
The Graduate School of Education recognized Gibson's lifetime of achievements with a 2001 Dedicated Educator Award.
Gibson also was editor of two significant journals—Urban Education and Educational Administration Abstracts—and published more than 40 journal articles, monographs, and book chapters. His most notable work was "The School Personnel Administrator," with Harold C. Hunt of Harvard (1965, Houghton Mifflin). This text was the benchmark against which all other works on personnel administration in education are measured.
To his colleagues and students, Gibson was an endearing figure, said Stephen Jacobson, associate dean and professor and chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy in the Graduate School of Education.
"Classes and conversations with Ollie were always adventures because as a classically trained scholar who had a wide range of interests, he took his audience to higher levels of understanding over paths the listener may have never before trodden," Jacobson said. "The preface to 'The School Personnel Administrator' is a perfect example, as he sets the stage for the text through quotations from Aristides' 'Rhodian Oration' and Thomas Mann's 'The Tables of the Law.'"