Oregon State University - Beaver Yearbook (Corvallis, OR)

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Courses, which arc held as prerequisite for admission to the Freshman year of a college course. 'I”he Winter Short Courses are scheduled for a six-week session in the months of January and February—the farmers’ and artisans’ leisure season. The course affords men and women too preoccupied to spend time in an extended course of industrial training an opportunity to receive instruction in interpreting and dealing with the practical problems of the farm, shop and home. The subjects in Agriculture and Domestic Science and Art arc given by means of lectures and laboratory demonstrations. The course in Mechanic Arts is given from the very first an essentially practical character, by actual manipulation in the shop and draughting room. In addition to the regular daily lectures and demonstrations given by members of the several school faculties, lectures are given by men, and also women, from abroad, who have won distinction in the held of industrial achievements. The growing popularity of the Winter Courses is evinced by the fact that in the present year 255 persons enrolled in the several courses, and in addition to the number regularly matriculated 340 registered as attendants in the sessions of Farmers’ Week. The planning and conduct of the Summer School contemplate the preparing of candidates for securing teachers’ certificates, the training of teachers and principals in the art of school method and supervision, the intensive review of subjects in which failure or condition has been incurred, a perusal of subjects requisite for admission to courses of the college, and training in certain elementary subjects of Mechanic Arts, Agriculture ami Domestic Science and Art, now required in the courses of the public and high schools in many states of the Union. A vital point of contact between the College and the great producing community is the Experiment Station. As a collector and recorder of data gathered from the exploration of material resources, as a busy center of scientific research, as a bureau of publicity, the station has been a potent agency of college extension, while the services it has rendered have incalculably-improved the state’s industrial conditions. In many undeveloped localities much practical missionary work has been done by the Farmers’ Institute and the Demonstration Train, two effective auxiliaries of the Experiment Station. Unceasingly, and with marked results, have representatives of the station staff preached the gospel of a scientific husbandry of resources. The annual report of the president of the Board of Regents for 1909-1910 has the following statement: During the past year there were held forty institutes, with an aggregate attendance of 11,250. Two demonstration trains have been run in co-operation with the Southern Pacific and the O-W. R. N. Railroad Companies. . . . It is estimated that the attendance at these trains amounted to 16,000 and over. By means of farmers’ institutes and the demonstration trains the College authorities came in contact with more than 27,000 people. 16

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to the multifarious conditions of a state-wide constituency. The personnel and appliances employed meet the requirements of efficiency. The environment holds many potential influences and varied that symmetrically shape and ennoble character. The distinctive type of education exemplified in the curriculum scheme of the Oregon Agricultural College contemplates a training that brings under discipline the mind, the eye, the ear, the tongue, the hand, the foot—the entire man. The product of such training is the scholar possessing qualifications intellectual, cultural, distinctive for successful competition with the actors and factors of the age in the endeavors that promote material and social progress. The reconstructed organization, one of the salient features of the policy of the present administration, has resulted in modernizing appreciably the spirit and workings of the institution. The centralizing of administrative powers, the fixing of definite rftyionsihilitv, the extension of the field of operations, the emphasis laid upon specialization, all mean an expansion of the college into a greater O. A. C. within the first years of the second quarter century era. The new organization plan disposes the work, in part, under four schools supervised by deans and, in part, under departments independent of the schools, supervised by head professors. Then there are departments auxiliary both to departments grouped under schools and to departments independent of schools. In the School of Agriculture are grouped the departments of Agronomy. Animal Husbandv, Dairy Husbandry, Poultry Husbandry, Horticulture Bacteriology. Entomology, Botany and Plant Pathology. Agricultural Chemistry, and Veterinary Science. The School of Domestic Science and Art maintains courses in cookery, serving, laundering, sanitation, nursing, plain and fancy sewing, basket weaving, entertaining, and other subjects germane to domiculture. The School of Kngineering and Mechanic Arts comprises the departments of Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Mining Engineering. The School of Commerce has arranged its courses under the heads of Business Administration, Stenography, Political Economy and Political Science. The departments operating independently of schools are those of Forestry ami Pharmacy. To this class of departments is to be added next year a department of Highway Construction. The departments auxiliary to those of distinctive work are the departments of Physics, Mathematics, English. Public Speaking, Modern Languages, Latin, History, Industrial Pedagogy, Physical Education, Military Science and Tactics. Library Practice. Art and Music. The blending of literary subjects belonging to the high school and academy courses with the elemental phases of certain technical subjects constitutes the curricula of the two-year Secondary 15

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The concurrent operation of all the agencies and appliances centering in the schools, departments and affiliations of the institution generates a momentum mighty in the driving of many wheels in the state's industrial machinery. The genius that conceived and perfected the mechanism of the plan is the pervading, energizing, shaping, directing intelligence sensibly felt in the execution of the plan. The happy subservience of many wills to a great dominant purpose is effected by an administration that combines clear foresight, penetrating insight and tactful oversight. The secret of successful control here lies far beyond the mere assertion of force. Authority is not summed up in a code of rules and regulations with pains and penalties for cowing underlings into submission. The conception of administration is ministration, a rendering of helpful service to those who come under the tutelage of the institution; and withal the engendering of such confidence in the student as shall prompt him to a cheerful compliance with lawful authority and to a zestful performance of the tasks that constitute his allotment. How consequential environment is in the development of student life has had countless iterations; so many, in fact, that the statement would he trite, were it not for the poignancy of the truth involved. The ideal community in which to maintain an institution that gathers to itself a large and varied patronage is that which combines such advantages as material resources, commercial prosperity, salubrious climate, aesthetic enjoyment, wholesome moral atmosphere and refined social standards. These favoring conditions arc present in high degree in the student life of the Oregon Agricultural College. The city, a trade center and the seat of a progressive, prosperous county, is situated at the confluence of rivers and the intersection of railroads, in the heart of a fertile agricultural section. Steamboat transportation on the Willamette River and rail transportation over intersecting lines facilitate shipping, and render access easy to the seat of the college from every locality of Oregon. The circumjacent farming communities abound in opportunities for observing the results of up-to-date methods in scientific farming and for noting data in agricultural experiments. The far-famed climate that has made Western Oregon the destination of myriads of home-seekers and pleasure-seekers is dispensed in all its tonic salubrity. The vast area of ocean air proximate and the sweep of the ocean current exercise an ameliorating influence on the rigors of latitude. Westerlies from the sea subdue the heat of Summer, and southwesterlies from the sea moderate the cold of Winter. Appreciating the efficacy of sound hygienic conditions as a means of conserving the physical welfare of the community, the guardians of public health have in no wise hesitated at the 17