Remembering Dr. Jack Stone

March 28, 2019

Dear Spelman Community,

We write today with sad news. The College was recently notified that Jack H. Stone, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Economics, passed away on Tuesday, March 12. Dr. Stone was an active member of the faculty who had significant impact in his department and throughout the Spelman community. Please see the reflections shared by his colleagues in Economics:

Dr. Jack Stone has been a mainstay of the Spelman College Economics Department for 44 years. He was instrumental in establishing the department’s permanence as an academic discipline after its separation from the Department of Social Sciences in the 1970s. As a colleague, Dr. Stone was actively involved in all phases of the department’s academic affairs, including teaching, scholarship and service.

Dr. Stone served as an effective mentor to junior faculty, reviewing drafts of manuscripts, offering input and donating his travel funds for conferences. He was exemplary when representing the department and the College with external stakeholders and constituents.

His collaborative working style was appreciated by colleagues with whom he worked on the capstone economics course, senior thesis research, and Economics 400 - a course that he fundamentally developed and began teaching before 1984. Additionally, he taught the main economics course for the Pauline E. Drake Scholars and served as a first-year advisor for many years.

A teacher-scholar, Dr. Stone consistently reminded us of the department’s need to have a scholarly presence. He published 15 articles in peer-reviewed journals during his time at Spelman, assisted colleagues with overload teaching, and taught a wide range of courses, allowing the department to broaden its range of elective offerings despite its small faculty size.

His willingness to teach Urban Economics (ECON 369), Introductory Economics (ECON 141), and Business Enterprise (ECON 300) reflected his engaged concern about the viability of the Economics Department. Also, he created and team-taught Economics and Sociological Perspectives of Health and co-authored the course findings and its pedagogical techniques. And he was instrumental in the department’s development and implementation of a grant proposal funded by the Department of Transportation.

Known for experimenting with new teaching techniques that he shared with others, Dr. Stone helped colleagues and new faculty adapt to change through his superior sense of collegiality, which made transitions near seamless in many respects. We express our earnest appreciation for his assistance with these transitions in the department’s instructional assignments.

We will remember his passion for the department’s success and his sense of humor, which brought laughter during department meetings and many office conversations. His facial expressions were the best—saying a lot without saying anything at all. It was truly an honor to have Dr. Stone as a colleague. –Department of Economics

The entire Spelman community is appreciative of Dr. Stone’s service to the College. He will be missed.

With Sorrow,