The School of Industrial and Labor Relations will hold a symposium in memory of noted Cornell University sociologist William Foote Whyte, Friday, April 6, at 2 p.m. in Room 115 of Ives Hall on campus.

Whyte, a Cornell faculty member from 1948 until his retirement in 1979, died July 16, 2000. The seminar is free and open to the public.

Several Cornell faculty members and visiting scholars will discuss Whyte's influence on the fields of sociology, anthropology and the practice of participatory action research. ILR Dean Edward J. Lawler will provide introductory remarks along with Ann W. Martin, ILR associate dean for extension. Other Cornell speakers include: Davydd Greenwood, Goldwin Smith Professor of Anthropology; Susanne Bruyere of ILR Extension's Program on Employment and Disability; and Kenneth Reardon, associate professor of city and regional planning, among others.

Guest speakers include William Kornblum, professor of sociology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY) and chair of the Center for Urban Research; Mel Kohn, professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University; and Stephen L. Schensul, associate professor in the Department of Community Medicine at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine.

The symposium will focus on three themes: "A Mind With No Boundaries," which addresses Whyte's contributions and influence; "Learning From the Field"; and "The Triple Threat Professor," which focuses on the dilemmas of integrating research, teaching and service. These will be followed by discussions to be archived for future dialogue.

Whyte was a specialist in organizational behavior and was regarded during his career as America's foremost expert in employee-owned firms. His hands-on research in diverse workplaces – from the oil fields of Oklahoma and the dining rooms of Stouffers to the rural villages of Peru and the Mondragon cooperative complex in Spain – was documented in 17 books.

It was Whyte's careerlong and still-controversial assertion that social scientists can maintain objectivity while immersed in the societies they study. Dubbed the "storytelling sociologist" by some professional peers who felt his work was not scientific, Whyte's work influencedmethodologies in a range of disciplines from anthropology, social psychology and industrial relations to organizational behavior, agricultural development and sociology. His how-to-do-it text was titled Learning From the Field: A Guide From Experience . He told his own story and those of many others in Participant Observer: An Autobiography , published in 1994 by the ILR Press at Cornell.

Whyte was born in 1914 in Springfield, Mass., and earned an A.B. in economics from Swarthmore College in 1936, before his research in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, 1936-40, took him to the streets of Boston. His experience while hanging with Boston's North End gangs as a college student was published in 1943 as Street Corner Society . Whyte earned his Ph.D. in sociology in 1943 at the University of Chicago and taught there from 1944 to 1948. Whyte also taught at the University of Oklahoma from 1942 to 1943.

After 1943, Whyte contracted polio, and he conducted all of his field research with the aid of braces, crutches and canes. He was not expected to walk but recovered some use of his legs thanks, in part, to an experimental treatment offered in a Boston hospital. His first book, after a year of rehabilitation at the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, wasHuman Relations in the Restaurant Industry (McGraw Hill, 1948).

When Whyte retired from his teaching duties, the emeritus professor devoted his attention to the extension division of ILR and was a co-founder and later research director of Programs for Employment and Workplace Systems (PEWS). His final book was Creative Problem Solving in the Field(AltaMira Press, 1997).

For more information, contact Theresa Woodhouse, ILR dean's office, (607) 255-5028, or email: thw3@cornell.edu