University of Illinois - Illio Yearbook (Urbana Champaign, IL)

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TEN YEARS OF PROGRESS of Men were appointed. Appropriations were largely increased and an amazing- vitality especially in the Agricultural College pervaded the whole University. The coming of men like Davenport, Mumford, Blair, and Hopkins marked an epoch not only in Agriculture but in the general interests of the University. Thus when Edmund Janes James was elected president August, 1904, he found the foundations laid true. It was therefore unnecessary to delay the progress begun by remodeling and tearing out. Besides it suited the characteristics of the new president to accept without hesitation whatever of the past was sound. Develop- ment was not only undelayed but even accelerated. In his inaugural address President James marked out the lines along which, in his opinion, progress should be made. They were as follows: 1. The University will stand for higher education of women. It will create new opportunities for them in the field of higher education. 2. The University is destined to be a great civil service academy. 3. The University is the scientific arm of the state government. 4. The University will integrate the educational forces of the state. 5. Finally, the state university represents the corporate longing of the people for higher things in the field of education. How far have these ideas been given body? A glance over the last ten years proves that they have been fitted out with corporealities against which the wind of circumstance blows in vain. Let us look at the first of these ideas. It cannot be denied that in the field of higher education for women there has been notable advancement. The Household Science department, thanks chiefly to Miss Bevier, backed up by the president, has taken its place among the foremost university departments of its kind. Just what does this mean? No less than the opening of new profess ions for women along the traditional lines of their activity. There is an ever increasing demand for women competent to fill such positions as dietitian and institutional manager. When the housekeeping expert whose business it will be to look over housekeeping arrangements, point out weak places and suggest cures, shall come University of Illinois Regiment 13

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TEN YEARS OF PROGRESS due as adequate educational courses as lawyers and doctors were receiving. And, he added with pertinent sturdiness, it is our own fault that we do not also enjoy them. Is not that the spirit that would hitch the worker's wagon to a star and make a chariot of it? The first president, or regent, as he was called then, John Milton Gregory, served the University in its youth through thirteen trying years. He urged higher education upon the young people of I he state often at a farmer's gathering from the back of a farmer's wagon. And he held fast to the spirit that would offer science to the tiller of the soil and the engineer at a time when the spirit was strug lim;- sadly with financial need and discouragement. During the presidency of Dr. Selim II. Peabody, who followed Dr. Gregory in 1880, the Agricultural Experiment Station was founded, a strong factor in the future development. When Dr. Pea- liody resigned in 1891, Johnathan T. Burrill, Professor of Botany and Horticulture, was made ac ting president. He had come to the University in 1868 and he under- stood its needs and problems thoroughly. The period of his service was one of marked expansion made possible by the absolute frankness with which Dr. Burrill asked for large sums of the legislature instead of curtailing his requests to the lowest possible amount. During this time the Graduate school was organized, the first fellowships instituted, and the faculty authorized to define the requirements for doc- tors' degrees. Also the departments of Municipal and Sanitary Engineering were created as well as that of Architectural Engineering. In 1894 Dr. Andrew Sloan Draper came to the University as president. During his administration the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the College of Dentistry and the School of Pharmacy, all located in Chicago because of the excellent clinical facilities, were added to the University. The State Library School was established in Urbana, also the College of Law, and the Engineering Experiment Station. The social interest of the student body began to press their claims insistently upon a busy faculty. Students often needed advice and no one had time to give it; moreover liberty was frequently tweaking the sober nose of justice when those in authority were greatly occupied in mind; therefore a Dean of Women and a Dean Railway Locomotive Testing Laboratory 12

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TEN YEARS OF PROGRESS into her own as the soil expert has come into his own in agriculture, it is to such institutions as Illinois that it will be necessary to look for trained service. The department has a research assistant, one of the few in this country, whose business it is to bring science to bear upon the problems of the home. Such problems as why jelly does not always jell or why bread in baking curls up from the bottom of some pans and not from others are problems that have been met and valiantly forced to yield their reasons. And a reason yielded is a dead problem. The Woman's Building where the Household Science department is housed, is one of the largest on the campus, an addition having been built recently. The department serves luncheons every day, sometimes to several hundred people in a commodious room on the second floor. The cafeteria plan is followed and the buying, cooking and serving offer laboratory work of a unique and valuable kind. There are at present about one thousand young women students in the various colleges of the University and this number undoubtedly will be materially increased as soon as the new Woman's Residence Hall, for which appropriation has been made, shall be built. The sorority houses, various church homes, and the Y. W. C. A. building offer excellent living accommodations to young women as far as they go, but they do not go nearly as far as the young women. Now the development of the work for women has been given somewhat in detail because it typifies the sincerity of development that has taken place along all lines. That this has been so is no matter of chance. It has not been accomplished without severe thought on the part of someone; an honest blunder ever being easier to make than a wise decision. The sincerity of the work in general, the closeness with which the glove of science has been made to fit upon the hand of life, could not be better proven than by the fact that men who develop special force within the university are being called to exceptional work outside. This year W. F. M. Goss, Dean of the Col- lege of Engineering, is in the employ of the Chicago Chamber of Commerce in charge of its smoke abatement project. Dr. Cyril G. Hopkins is in the employ of the Southern Settlement and Development Company, an organization comprising Young Woman's Christian Association 14