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The University mourns the passing of four members of the campus community.
Ming Fay, retired professor of art, died February 23, 2025. He was 82. Born in Shanghai in 1943, Fay moved to Hong Kong as a child and later immigrated to the United States. He earned a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara. After settling in New York City in the 1970s, he taught at several institutions before joining the William Paterson faculty in 1983. In the 1980s and 1990s, Fay was an active member of two pioneering Asian American artist collectives: the Epoxy Art Group, which held several exhibitions together, commenting on the geo-political and cultural issues of the time, and Godzilla: Asian American Art Network, an artist group that promoted Asian American art visibility. A sculptor who originally created abstract geometric metal pieces, Fay evolved his work to focus on mixed media. Greatly influenced by his everyday surroundings in Lower Manhattan, from the markets in Chinatown to shops on Canal Street, he began producing the gigantic and unique hyper-real, textured, and vibrantly colored gardens of fruits and sci-fi plant forms for which he is known. His work is held in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New Museum, M+, and the Hong Kong Museum of Art, among others, and commissioned works are located in the Whitehall Ferry Terminal on Staten Island, O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, and the Delancey/Essex Subway Station in New York. Important exhibitions and installations have taken place at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Exit Art, Grounds for Sculpture, Art Basel, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In summer 2025, his work was featured in Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden, a one-person exhibition of his large-scale sculptures at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. He retired from the University in 2016.
Cho Kin (CK) Leung, professor emeritus of economics, died May 15, 2025, at the age of 94. Leung was born in Hong Kong, the fourth of 17 children. With a minimal grasp of the English language he came to the United States in 1960. After arriving in New York, he worked as a waiter in a Chinese restaurant in Coney Island to fund his studies, earning master’s and doctoral degrees in economics at New York University. He also immersed himself in classical literature to master the English language, in addition to being fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin. His academic career spanned nearly four decades. He taught at Seton Hall University and Long Island University before joining the William Paterson faculty in 1974. He taught a wide range of introductory and advanced undergraduate and graduate courses, specializing in labor relations and international trade. He also served as chair of the Department of Economics, Finance, and Global Business, and as interim dean of the Cotsakos College of Business. Leung retired from the University in 2008. Beyond the lecture hall, he was a lifelong tennis player, playing in local, state, and national competitions up through his 93rd year.
Robert Manuel, retired coordinator of grant development for the Office of Institutional Advancement and senior writer/editor for the Department of Marketing and Public Relations, died on September 25, 2025. He was 75. A graduate of Drew University with a bachelor of arts degree, he held master’s degrees in political science and government and journalism from Columbia University. Manuel joined the University’s Marketing and Public Relations staff in 1995 as a senior writer/editor, where he worked on a wide range of editorial projects including the academic catalogs, Commencement programs, and numerous other marketing materials. He also wrote feature stories for the WP Magazine, always capturing the essence of his subject. In 2011 he took his skills to the University’s Office of Institutional Advancement, where he served as a coordinator of grant development, a position he held until his retirement in 2015.
Edith Wallace, professor emeritus of biology, died on September 3, 2025, at the age of 89. A native of New Jersey, Wallace earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Montclair State University, and a doctorate in zoology from Rutgers University. She joined the William Paterson faculty in 1968, teaching courses in anatomy and physiology, genetics, endocrinology, and more. During her tenure at the University, she served as chair of the Department of Biology for six years, was a member of the Faculty Senate, and served on numerous department and campus-wide committees. Wallace was the author of numerous laboratory manuals, abstracts, meeting presentations, and journal articles. She retired in 1997. After retiring from teaching, she studied at the horticulture program at Bergen Community College and the New York Botanical Garden. She became well-known for conducting enjoyable and informative walks and talks at many gardens in northern New Jersey and received several prestigious regional garden society awards. Wallace was active in the Glen Rock Garden Club, Passaic County Master Gardeners, New Jersey Botanical Gardens, the Lilac Garden Restoration Project at Skylands, the Garden State Garden Consortium, Board of Managers of the New Jersey Agriculture Experimental Station, and the Passaic County Board of Agriculture. She was a lifetime member of the American Society for the Advancement of Science and the Audubon Society.
