Celeste Turner Wright can boast a number of University of California, Davis, "firsts": first woman faculty member with a Ph.D., first woman in the tenure track, first humanist to receive the Faculty Research Lecturer Award, first drama instructor and first director of plays. At the age of 90, she has made history again: A campus building has been named in her honor. While she's not exactly the first woman to have a building named after her -- only two other buildings at UC Davis bear female names -- the honor is close enough for "pioneer status." Wright recently learned firsthand from Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef that UC President Richard Atkinson approved his recommendation that the Dramatic Art Building carry the 90-year-old professor emerita's name. "The quality and quantity of your contributions to the Davis campus, particularly the programs in English and dramatic art, have been extraordinary, and naming the Dramatic Art Building 'Celeste Turner Wright Hall' is one tangible way in which the campus can say 'thank you' for your exceptional work as a faculty member and department chair," Vanderhoef said in a letter. An event is planned in October to formally name the building. Karl Zender, chair of the English department, recommended in a letter last fall to Vanderhoef that a building be named in Wright's honor. When Wright came to Davis in 1928, she was 22 years old and had just completed her doctorate at UC Berkeley. From the beginning, Wright was an active member of the English department, teaching, writing, researching and working with students for 51 years, from 1928 to 1979. She chaired the department for 27 years. Wright also directed student plays, at least one a semester, from the start of her academic career, and she occasionally taught a course in drama. Dramatic art courses and productions were considered the English department's responsibility until what is now dramatic art and dance became a free-standing department in 1961. In her memoir, "University Woman: The Memoir of Celeste Turner Wright," she says, "I still look back at my productions -- about 10 full-length plays and the same number of one acts -- with considerable pride. The only problem was to guide the students away from trash: Instead of The First Year they wanted something called Broken Dishes." A widely published scholar on English Renaissance literature, she was the first member of a humanities department to receive the UC Davis Faculty Research Lecturer Award (in 1963). Her landmark essay on Amazonianism in the literature of that period continues to be cited appreciatively by scholars, Zender said. Wright herself is a frequently published poet. One of her books of poems, "A Sense of Place," won a Commonwealth Club of California medal. She also created and eventually endowed the annual Celeste Turner Wright Poetry Prize for undergraduates, conducted under the auspices of the Academy of American Poets. The recommendation to name a building after Wright was initiated by the English department and endorsed by the dramatic art and dance department. It was then approved at the campus level by the Board on the Naming of UCD Properties, Programs and Facilities and the Council of Deans and Vice Chancellors before it was forwarded to UC President Atkinson. Zender said in his nomination that the current state of building names on campus argued strongly in support of her candidacy. The other two buildings carrying women's names are Gladys J. Everson Hall and Susan F. and William M. Regan Hall. He pointed out that when Wright came to Davis as the first female Ph.D., only eight out of 350 students were women. UC Davis is now a campus with approximately equal numbers of male and female students and increasing numbers of female faculty members. "Naming a building after Professor Wright will acknowledge and support this transformation in a public, ceremonial and enduring fashion," Zender said.