Kent State University - Chestnut Burr Yearbook (Kent, OH)

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Fearl Harbor changes the plans of many Kent students. Enrollment decreases to some 600 women plus a handful of males. President Emeritus John E. McGilvrey by this time has returned to spearhead a vigorous campaign for federal aid for campus improve- ments. With his help, the school is granted over $500,000 from the Public Works Administration, to be used principally for the construction of a new science building (later McGilvrey hall) in 1940. Then comes Pearl Harbor and expansion plans once again are set aside. M

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Engleman hall, the first campus building to be faced with red brick rather than yellow, is constructed in 1937. force will prevent the conversion of the college into an insane asylum. Things seem to be looking up everywhere. They ' re reopening the banks, incomes are ris- ing, the railroads are being saved. The New Dealers are taking over and people are dream- ing again. In Kent they ' re dreaming of a University! A Neil ' University Rises By 1935, the Kent State University dream is a reality. A College of Business Administration coordinates with the existing Colleges of Edu- cation and Liberal Arts. A graduate program offers courses leading to the master ' s degree. Time advances. President Engleman re- tires in 1937, and a residence hall is built in his name the following year. Karl C. Leebrick is appointed next president. Like McGilvrey, Leebrick is a non-conform- ist and he promptly makes sweeping changes. Nineteen departments are placed in the College of Liberal Arts and organized in four divisions. Agriculture and library science are dropped. The schools of journalism, music, art and speech are established. Liberal arts and business ad- ministration receive emphasis, and, consequent- ly, men students exceed women students for the first time in Kent ' s history in the fall of 1939. Roosevelt stimulates recovery with the PWA. Mc- Gilvrey hall is built under the program in 1940. Jf ■■ « ■ - 16

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Marines wade ashore at a Tinian island beach- point to aid assault troops fighting inland. The draft or defense work causes the enroll- ment to dwindl e from 2,707 in September, 1940, to 696 by the spring of 1944. And, of 131 full- time instructors in the fall of 1941, 29 joined the armed forces and 10 others leave for work re- lated to the war effort. More than 5,000 stu- dents, faculty and alumni ultimately see active service in the armed forces. Raymond E. Manchester, Kent ' s first dean of men, is launching a penny carnival to make possible the mailing of campus publications to the thousands of men and women in service from Kent. They will receive copies of Dean Manchester ' s famed Saturday Letters, which he has been writing since 1935, along with other campus publications. In July, 1945, nature yields one of its most incredible sources of energy and the atomic age is born. A soldier returns to campus on furlough and becomes the center of a crowd of co-eds. George A. Bowman President, 1944-