NOTE: This page is still a work in progress, please feel free to share any remarks, photos, or stories about Ed with Communications Specialist McKenzie Meza (mim4@arizona.edu(link sends e-mail))
Dr. Edgar J. McCullough
Distinguished scholar and educator, the college’s first dean, and a deeply respected humanitarian whose life’s work touched countless students, colleagues and communities.
Deceased January 29th, 2026
Expertise: Dr. McCullough earned his doctorate in geology from the University of Arizona in 1963 and went on to build an extraordinary career in service to the university. Over the decades, he served as professor, department head, and as the inaugural dean of the newly established Faculty of Science—now the College of Science—a role he held from 1982 to 1992. His leadership during a period of significant growth helped shape the college’s academic foundation, standards of excellence and collaborative culture that continue to define it today.
From Interim Department Head Professor Paul Kapp:
Memories from colleagues and friends of Ed:
From Professor Susan Beck: "The gang of 4! Clem Chase, Bill Dickinson, Ed McCullough, George Davis - All former Geoscience Department Heads."
I was a grad student in the Geosciences Dept in the 1960's, and remember his first years as a new Assistant Prof. He was in charge of the Intro Geology classes (which had many sections and many students). He pioneered in having Videos made of all of his lectures in those first years to streamline the delivery of this course material. Because of his involvement with the large introductory courses, he was also involved with, and very accessible to many of us graduate students. His subsequent transformative accomplishments for the Department and University are a well known record. - William A. Sauck, Western Michigan University
Remembering Ed McCullough by Professor Emeritus Jiba Ganguly:
It is fair to say that Ed played the most transformative role in greatly elevating the national and international stature of the department through his leadership role. He was not afraid to make tough calls in tenure-promotion decisions, but in some cases that I came to know, he sought out additional external opinion and without any prejudice. For my own career, Ed played a role that was beyond all expectations and for which I remained eternally grateful to him. I wrote about it in my academic memoir (Academic Reminiscences and Thermodynamics-Kinetics of Thermo-Barometry-Chronology) that was published under the Geochemical Perspectives series of the European Association of Geochemistry in 1921. It is excerpted below.
1.4.3 Back to USA: UCLA and the University of Arizona
Life at Arizona soon became quite difficult because of the restrictive nature of the visa with which I and my wife had returned to USA and the dogged effort of a local immigration officer to get us deported. “This guy had his education at our expense and I am not going to let him spend the rest of his life in our country” was his telephone message to the University representative who was handling my visa problem. But thanks to the Herculean efforts of the department head, Ed McCullough, who managed to get the local congressman, Maurice Udall involved in the process of changing our visa status, we were finally able to beat the process of deportation and gain permanent residence status in USA (Udall was then running for the presidential nomination of the Democratic party against the president to be, Jimmy Carter). The fiercely opposing forces of the society are still at play and no less so than they were about 45 years ago!