Countless faculty members have called Case Western Reserve University their professional home over the years—and recently, the university bid farewell to some of them as they chose to retire.
The Daily reached out to faculty members who announced their retirements after more than 25 years of service to the university in order to share their impacts through teaching, mentorship, research and administrative accomplishments with the university community.
Learn more about those who told us their stories—and check out the story of one couple who retired together after a combined 60+ years.
Cynthia Beall
College of Arts and Sciences
47 years
As a Distinguished University Professor Emerita and the Sarah Idell Pyle Professor of Anthropology at Case Western Reserve, Cynthia Beall devoted her career to understanding how indigenous people—particularly Andean, Tibetan and East African highlanders—adapt and evolve to low oxygen availability at such high altitudes.
She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. As a professor at Case Western Reserve, where she began working and researching in 1976, Beall and collaborators made key discoveries over the course of nearly half a century. Highlanders were long thought to have biologically adapted to low oxygen levels, however Beall discovered that biological and genetic adaptations varied among populations, particularly Andeans and Tibetans. For instance, Tibetans have a special version of the EPAS1 gene that allows for a healthy amount of hemoglobin.
She is most proud of her fieldwork in the Tibet Autonomous Region, Nepal, Peru, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Mongolia and the United States. In some remote villages and nomadic camps, people had never encountered westerners before or contributed to research. Beall thanks them for their hospitality and generosity.
Jonathan L. Entin
School of Law
39 years
Over the course of nearly four decades at Case Western Reserve, Jonathan Entin, the David L. Brennan Professor Emeritus in the School of Law, accumulated many memorable experiences. One in particular was a privilege he feels he cannot sufficiently describe with words: He maintained personal and professional relationships with both Fred Gray and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Entin came to know Gray, the legendary civil rights lawyer and alumnus of Case Western Reserve, as a good friend as he taught many of Gray’s cases throughout his career; and, following law school, he was fortunate enough to clerk for and begin a lifelong friendship with Justice Ginsburg, associate justice of the Supreme Court until her death in 2020.
These are but a few of his many fond memories from his career. For many years, Entin was the faculty advisor for the Case Western Reserve Law Review, which gave him the opportunity to supervise the writing of hundreds of student notes that were printed in that publication or elsewhere. When the School of Law hosted his retirement reception in the spring, Entin was surprised and delighted to see many of his former Law Review students in attendance—many of whom traveled hundreds of miles for the occasion.
Over the years, Entin received nearly a dozen teaching awards, including the Distinguished Teacher Award from the Law Alumni Association. Additionally, five graduating classes of students voted him teacher of the year, and two other classes voted him administrator of the year when he served as the law school’s associate dean for academic affairs. He also received the Federal Bar Association’s first national award for Excellence in Civics Education.
Above all, he’s most proud of being able to teach his remarkable students—an experience he credits with teaching him an enormous amount. He shared his expertise beyond his courses, via more than 100 articles, book chapters, essays and reviews about constitutional law, administrative law, civil rights and the Supreme Court.
Most of all Entin appreciated the ease of getting to know and work with so many people on campus over the years. He has friends and colleagues in almost every other school at the university, which he said has made his time at the university enormously rewarding.