March 2006

Library Dedication Celebrates Fredric Jablin's Legacy


Dr. Fredric M. Jablin, 1952-2004

Approximately 50 friends, family members, colleagues and alumni gathered to honor an outstanding scholar and beloved friend, father and teacher at the dedication ceremony of the Fredric Jablin Library in the Jepson Faculty Lounge on February 26. Dean Kenneth Ruscio opened the ceremony by recalling the many contributions Jablin made on both an academic and personal level before his tragic death in October 2004.

Jablin’s former colleagues Joanne Ciulla and Gill Hickman announced the dedication of two publications to Jablin. Ciulla and co-editors Terry Price of the Jepson School and Susan E. Murphy of Claremont McKenna College dedicated “The Quest for Moral Leaders: Essays on Leadership Ethics,” published in 2005, to Jablin. Hickman and coauthor Richard Couto of Antioch University dedicated their book chapter “Causality, Change and Leadership,” forthcoming in 2006 in “A Quest for a General Theory of Leadership: A Multidisciplinary Approach” edited by George Goethals and Georgia Sorenson, to Jablin, whom they credited with formulating many of the ideas discussed in the chapter.

Jablin’s ideas also inspired her, said Adrienne Capps (’98), who took numerous classes with him as an undergraduate at the Jepson School. Suppressing a laugh as she shot a glance at Ciulla and Hickman, Capps admitted that she didn’t remember most of the leadership theories she learned at Jepson. “What I do remember is how Dr. Jablin taught me to think critically and analytically,” Capps said.

Capps created the Jablin Research Fellowship to honor her former professor, known in academic circles for his meticulous scholarly research. The $2,000 fellowship will be awarded for each of the next five summers to a Jepson student engaged in an unpaid research internship.  

Michael Jablin, Jablin’s only sibling and the guardian of his three children, thanked the Jepson community and others for the outpouring of support he and the children received following Jablin’s death, noting especially the comfort he and the children took from reading the hundreds of letters from Jablin’s former students. “This library will be a constant reminder of all the affection and appreciation you all had for Fred and will help keep his memory alive,” Michael Jablin said.  

Indeed it will. Oversized chairs and couches beckon to would-be readers in the beautifully reappointed lounge. A large oak bookcase containing faculty publications, leadership studies classics and the dissertations of Jablin’s graduate students spans one entire wall. And on one shelf of the bookcase rests a framed collage of three photographs of Jablin in the classroom bearing the simple inscription “Dr. Fredric M. Jablin, Scholar, Teacher, Friend, 1952-2004.”