University of Rhode Island - Renaissance / Grist Yearbook (Kingston, RI)

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President Edwards Message 1 he finest thing in life is character, and the great business of living is the build- ing of character, which is the resultant of all one’s yieldings and all one’s strivings, working upon a more or less plastic inheritance of individuality. With our physical bodies we inherit the driving power of passions and emotions. The building of char- acter lies in developing strength of will and sureness of judgment to direct, control, and refine passion and emotion. This it is that makes one captain of one’s own soul; master of his own fate. “Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers,” says Tennyson, and the wisdom he means is just this slow and painful process of building character; of making oneself captain of one’s own soul; of placing at the helm of one’s own life ship an intelligent pilot — sure of judgment to lay the course and strong of will to hold it. Much of the teaching of today fills me with distressful forboding. It stresses the dominance of inclination and desire; it talks much of “self-expression.” The old, puritan way of life unduly emphasized self-denial and repression. We of today have gone to the more dangerous extreme of canonizing ease and pleasure, and haloing every vagrant impulse of the human heart. Surely, all the teachings of our slow progress from savagery and barbarism can- not be misleading, nor are we ready to declare obsolete the words, duty, honor, truth, and love. The secret of all our progress has been and still is, “Per aspera ad astra.” Howard Edwards Twenty-one

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HONORABLE HOWARD EDWARDS. A M., LL.D. President of Rhode Island State College

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THJEi GFLlST GEORGE E. ADAMS, M.Agr. Dean of Agriculture Dean of Men C. LLOYD SWEETING. M.A. Dean of Business Administration Deans and Curriculum Executives JOHN BARLOW. A.M. Dean of Science ROYAL L. WALES. B.S. Dean of Engineering HELEN E. PECK, A.M. Twenty-two