Stephen Ethier Installed as the First Ruth Tuttle Freeman Research Professor
of Radiation Oncology
Ruth Tuttle Freeman |
In ceremonies held on May 6, the University of Michigan Medical School inaugurated
the Ruth Tuttle Freeman Research Professorship in Radiation Oncology and installed
Stephen P. Ethier, Ph.D, as the first Freeman Research Professor.
Ethier, who serves as the co-director of the Breast Oncology Program in the
U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center and as director of the Division of Radiation
and Cancer Biology in the Department of Radiation Oncology, joined the Medical
School faculty in 1988 and was promoted to the rank of professor of radiation
oncology in 1999.
Left to right: Ted Lawrence, Allen
Lichter, Stephen Ethier, Ethier’s mentor Robert Ullrich,
and Richard Guilford, attorney for the estate of Ruth Tuttle
Freeman. Photo: Gregory Fox |
A 1977 graduate of St. Anselm’s College in Manchester, New Hampshire,
Ethier earned his master’s degree in radiological health from the University
of Michigan in 1979 and his doctorate in radiation biology and carcinogenesis
from the University of Tennessee in 1982. Prior to joining the U-M, Ethier
served on the staff of the Michigan Cancer Foundation. His research in breast
cancer has been consistently funded by the National Institutes of Health throughout
his U-M career.
Ethier’s recent research has focused on altered signaling in human breast
cancer cells, expression cloning of breast cancer oncogenes, novel technologies
for non-invasive detection, diagnosis and treatment of cancer, as well as identification
and function analysis of novel breast cancer oncogenes. Ethier participates
on panels, grant review study sections and site visit teams for the National
Cancer Institute and the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Council.
The professorship was established by a gift from the estate of Ruth Tuttle
Freeman, a longtime Lansing area resident. Freeman was born in Leslie, Michigan,
in 1904, the eldest of two daughters of Judge and Mrs. Arthur J. Tuttle, and
was raised in Detroit where her father, an 1895 graduate of the U-M Law School
who was nominated to his seat on the federal bench of the Eastern District
of Michigan by President William Howard Taft in 1912, served until his death
in 1944. Inspired by their father’s love of the law, Freeman and her
sister, Esther Tuttle Bailey, both entered the 1930 class of the Michigan Law
School. Two of just 12 women in the class of 225 students, the sisters, upon
graduation, established the law firm of Tuttle and Tuttle, the first all-woman
law firm in Lansing, which they maintained for 10 years before their husbands’ work
took them elsewhere. Ruth Tuttle Freeman was preceded in death by her husband
of 50 years, Howard Blair Freeman, a General Motors executive, in 1987.
Mrs. Freeman was deeply involved in community work, serving on the board of
Sparrow Hospital, helping to establish the Detroit Junior League Senior Center,
and working for the American Red Cross and the Priscilla Inn, a charitable
organization maintained by Clara Ford, wife of Henry Ford. She also served
for more than 30 years as vice president of the People’s Bank of Leslie.
|
