Frank L. Fenton with S. Joseph DeBrum Presenting Award

Dr. Frank L. Fenton:  Dean of Instruction and Professor of English and Acting President. Selected to serve as Acting President for Lake Merced campus when Dr. Glenn S. Dumke left the executive post in November, 1961, was a faculty veteran. Dr. Frank L. Fenton had served at the College since 1930 and had filled the positions of both Coordinator of Graduate Studies and Dean of Instruction as well as conducted English classes with considerable style and erudition. A strong supporter of student engagement, Dr. Fenton was one of three presidents—alongside Dr. Dumke and Dr. Paul Dodd—who backed the creation of the first college-sanctioned free speech platform in the United States. Erected in the northwest corner of the Quad, the platform gave students an official space to host public discourse and invite speakers, helping to shape SF State’s legacy of open dialogue and civic involvement. Dr. Fenton also had Santa Rosa connections. (The Sonoma County capital seat had been the scene of both Dr. Frederic Burk and Dean Archibald B. Anderson educational activity.) Dr. Fenton received all his undergraduate and graduate education at Stanford University. He was interim leader until the naming of Dr. Paul A. Dodd as President in the spring of 1962. Following his retirement from San Francisco State, Dr. Fenton served for several terms as a professor of English in the Hawaiian Island, During the summer 1969 Dr, Fenton suffered an attack which has forced him to be a patient at the Marin Convalescent and Rehabilitation Hospital, 30 Hacienda Drive, Tiburon, California. He died in 1972.

S. Joseph DeBrum. 1948. Professor of Business and Department Head for Business Education. BA (1934) San Jose State College; MA (1940) and Ed.D. (1948) Stanford University. Retired 1973. DeBrum’s high school textbook General Business for Economic Understanding was translated into Spanish Principios de Comercio con Fundamentos Matematicos for use in Latin American secondary schools. He was known to help students financially to get Ph.D.s, and at least one returned to teach at SF State.

Credits: Frank L. Fenton's bio and S. Joseph DeBrum's bio were provided by Meredith Eliassen. Some descriptions were developed with the assistance of ChatGPT, an AI language model by OpenAI.