This information about Nair Residence Hall and Bertha V. Nair is provided in the dedication program:
Bertha V. Nair Women's Residence Hall:
"Opened for service at the beginning of the second semester, 1971, Bertha V. Nair Women's Residence Hall currently houses some 400 women and has a total capacity of 450. It faces East Main Street just east of Carrier Hall. Built at a cost of $3.41 million, the high-rise dormitory contains seven floors plus basement and apartments for the head resident and six resident assistants. Additional facilities include student and public lounges, study lounges, vestibules and reception areas, galleries, recreation and television rooms, kitchenettes and vending areas, project rooms, exercise rooms and student laundries. Construction is of reinforced concrete frame with concrete footings and foundations. Masonry walls, with supporting built-up roofs, are faced with red brick. Windows are of aluminum. Total area of the structure is 97,400 square feet. Final plans call for bituminous driveways and parking areas, sidewalks, exterior concrete stairs and elevators."
Bertha V. Nair:
"Professor Bertha V. Nair joined the English faculty at Clarion State College, then Clarion State Normal, in 1918, and for the next thirty-eight years her name was synonymous with English for Clarion students. She was Chairman of the Department of English, which included Speech and Theater Arts, certainly from 1921 - perhaps earlier, until her retirement in 1956. Born in Beaver County in 1889, Miss Nair earned her A.B. degree at Westminster College in New Wilmington and taught in a Hickory Township High School near Sharon and at New Wilmington High School before accepting a teaching fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh, where she was awarded the M.A. in English in 1917. Her interest in advanced study was life long, and at various times after she came to Clarion she attended the University of Wisconsin, Syracuse University, and Harvard. She made a literary tour of England in 1935, and in 1953 just three years before her retirement, she spent a sabbatical semester studying at the University of Southern California. A dedicated teacher, Miss Nair was a favorite among students in each of whom she had an individual and personal interest. Her personality and teaching skills attracted scores of young men and women to English as a major field of study and these students, together with her own consulting in public schools, have influenced widely and constructively English instruction in the area served by the college. Her capacity for work was prodigious. For example, during her last year at the college she taught Freshman Composition I and II, Literature I and II, Philology, Recent Trends in the Teaching of English, and Advanced Composition. In addition she was sponsor of a sorority and the press club and adviser to the college paper. Dedication of a residence hall to Miss Nair is an appropriate recognition of her service to the college, for devoted as she was to her academic discipline, students as people were always first with her. That she often inspired them by her example and encouraged them by her kindness is attested to be alumni far and wide."
