Honorary Degree Recipient
Doctor of Humane Letters
Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, September 9, 2002
James I. Brown was a faculty member in the Department of Rhetoric at the University of Minnesota from 1934 until his retirement in 1976. He was an early leader in the study of communication. His research was in two different but related areas: one was vocabulary development; the other was adult reading proficiency. He provided national leadership in the study of communication and was in demand by academia, business, industry, and government to produce materials for various reading publics. He is widely acclaimed for his research articles and for textbooks used at over 200 colleges and universities throughout the country. He is particularly well known for revising the Nelson-Denny test, which was designed to assist in the classification of incoming high school or college students to aid in the diagnosis of reading difficulties and to predict general academic success. He has received numerous awards and honors and continues to receive requests for new books from his publisher.
Biographies are as-of time of award presentation.