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

Page 20 text:

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

Page 19 text:

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

Page 21 text:

TEN YEARS OF PROGRESS seventeen southern states that would raise their soils to maximum of efficiency for the sake of citizenship. These are positions of the greatest responsibility, carrying high salaries and it means much that the University has offered to such men the opportunity for development. Nor is it only individual men who are being called upon. The spring of 1913 was a time of dangerous floods. When the Illinois river broke its bounds, Governor Dunne sent for the men of the State Water Survey and placed at their disposal the Steamship Illinois, their work being to go from place to place in order to purify water supplies and generally counteract the unsanitary conditions attendant upon a flood. Just what this work saved in money and suffering cannot be estimated, it being so far impossible to count- corpses that do not occur. The work and the men of the Mine Rescue Station were weighed in the balance and found gloriously adequate at the time of the Cherry Mine disaster. Other means, which do not exhaust the list but merely hint at it, by which the university stretches its long scientific arm over the state, are the State Geological Survey, the State Soil Survey, whereby every county in the state will be, in time, surveyed and its soil type fixed; the Entomologist's office which has saved the state much by devising means to kill such pests as the cinch bug and the corn root aphis; and the Ceramics Department. The last mentioned department established in 1914, has attracted widespread attention. Experimentation has shown that Illinois is fully capable of producting practically all of her own clay products and he who teaches a clay bank to blossom with profit deserves to rank with that oft mentioned human abstraction who coaxes out two grass blades where only one is in habit of growing. In January, 1913, the Department rather tentatively offered a short course to clay manufacturers. So enthusiastic were those who came that it was given again this year with a doubled attendance. The science that fattens the pocket book does not have to beg for attention. Another notable short course given this year by the Engineering College was the School for Highway Engineers. Professor Ira O. Baker, who has been with the University for forty years, was the originator. And even he who is something Baseball at Illinois 15