College of Arts and Sciences

About Fred Ewing Case and Lola Austin Case

Lola Austin Case earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Western in 1942. Her professional career included teaching assignments in Neponset, Montrose, CO, Indiana University, Los Angeles Metropolitan College, the University of California and San Fernando Valley State University.

Lola Austin Case earned a PhD in Education from Indiana University in 1963, with the dissertation “Practices of reporting research recommended by colleges and universities.” Timothy Long wrote:

For anyone who has written or directed a dissertation, Lola’s is an entertaining Zeitdokument. She collected from all of the PhD granting institutions of the United States their style sheets for the preparation of dissertations and compared them. This may strike one as the embodiment of tediousness, but there was clairvoyance to it. . . . Within three years, the National Defense and Education Act expanded hugely the number of dissertation writers beyond even what Lola was imagining.

Fred Case was a professor emeritus of the graduate school of management at the University of California, Los Angeles. He served in the US Army in World War Two, fighting in Italy, Belgium, and Germany. After the war he earned a MA and PhD in Business from Indiana University, where he met and married Lola Austin.

Dr. Case was one of America’s leading real estate experts and the author of over 18 books, 30 monographs, 100 articles in professional journals and over 80 other reports and reviews. His insights on national and regional real estate markets benefited financial institutions; local, state and federal governments; universities and real estate companies.

Dr. Case’s 2001 gift established the Case Writer-in-Residence, honoring the memory of Lola Austin. “The Fred Ewing Case and Lola Austin Case Writer-in-Residence in English is an extraordinary gift to the department of English and Journalism and its programs,” according to former College of Arts and Sciences Dean Phyllis Farley Rippey. “The gift is an endorsement of an already wonderful program and will bring an infusion of stellar writing talent into the department on a regular basis.”

Return to Case Writers Page