Mansfield University - Carontawan Yearbook (Mansfield, PA)

Page 30 text:

William R. Strauglin, Ph. D,, President A

Page 29 text:

i

Page 31 text:

Our College ih. A. r. n iLiH,,, Ihttit itf t iixt nifl titii All Pennsylvania colleges are maintained to prepare teachers for the public schools of the coniinonvvealth. In addition to prepara- tion for elementary and secondary teaching, including the special fields of English, Social Studies, Mathematics, Science and Foreign Languages, Mansfield also provides depart- ment supervisors in Music and in Vocational Home Economics. All its work is on the collegiate level and leads at the end of four years to the Bachelor of Science degree. Naturally, in time, many of its graduates leave the state or enter other professions. Its largest alumni association is located in New York City. Among the twenty-tive per cent of its students who are men, many are attracted in prosperous times into more re- munerative occupations. Some use teaching as a stepping stone to other professions. Many women marry early. The average teaching life is short. Actually therefore, any teachers college performs a very large social service in the training of citizens who teach briefly, if at all. Fortunately, a teach- ers ' course happens to be the best collegiate training for citizenship. Mans- field also has a unique opportunity to ser e the state a ' it is the only insti- tution of collegiate rank in an enormous section of the Northern Tier. Start- ing with the New York border its nearest collegiate neighbors are located on the east in Scranton, on the west in Meadville and Edinboro. on the south in Lewisburg, State College, Bloom.sburg and Lock Haven. Any institution so situated among a capable but scattered population has opportunities, responsibilities and duties larger and even more vital than those ordinarily faced by similar educational institutions dissimilarly located. Mansfield ' s first graduate and oldest alumnus tells how as a boy on his father ' s farm on the mountain side, someone came back from town one day and said to him, Mansfield is going to have a seminary and an iron furnace. It did. For better than two generations the furnace has been only a name and a fading memory amorig other shifting, changing indus- tries. The conference seminary shortly become a Normal School and then a Teachers College. The enthusiasm of early students and the zeal of the founders has been contagious and persistent. This explains my Mansfield, technically an institution for the professional training of teachers, has such a firm hold upon all the citizens of Pennsylvania ' s Northern Tier of coun- ties, and why it has been able to perform so unique a service for the terri- tory in which it is the only college.