Howard University - Bison Yearbook (Washington, DC)

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colleges on the high level of European learning for a hitherto illiterate race was indeed a stupendous one. Rut subsequent experience has more than justified the experiment. During the first twenty years of the life of the college its growth was very slow, almost to the point of discouragement. The numbers wabbled back and forth, from four in 1868 to sixtv-two in 1906. The College Department was declared to lx? the smallest department in the University, and operated at a cost out of all proportion to the number of pupils benefited. It became an o|x?n and honest query whether it was worth while to attempt to maintain a purely collegiate department at such expense, and with such little prospect of numerical augmentation. In 1907. the designation was changed from The College Department to the College of Arts and Sciences. This change was made in conformity with a general plan of University nomenclature, but did not connote any alteration whatsoever, in function. aim. or jwirposc. The curriculum has been reorganized. The physical, vital and social sciences have been given their due place along side »f l.atin, Greek and Mathematics of the old curriculum. The faculty Has been augmented and strengthened. Competent instruction is offered in the usual range of college subjects. Since that time the numbers have more than quadrupled. The College of Arts and Sciences has become the largest department of the University. The present enrollment contains 99 2 students, 262 young men and 70 young women. This docs not include the large number from other departments who share the partial benefit of its courses. More than three hundred alumni of the College of Arts and Sciences are scattered throughout the length and breadth of the country, and arc filling the highest stations allotcd to colored men and women. As teachers, ministers, physicians, pharmacists, dentists, lawyer?, writers, authors, and general workers, they are standing in the high places of leadership and direction of ten million American citizens. The College of Arts and Sciences is the largest and most favored Negro college on the face of the earth. By its fruits, the higher education of the Negro will he justified or condemned lint the faith of the founders is already vindicated by the fruits of their labors. Wisdom can only be justified of her children. ft 13

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Lj •X History of College of Arts and Sciences The statesmen-philanthropists who founded Howard University were firm believers in liberal culture of the traditional New England type. The fact that they established ‘ A university for the education of youth in the liberal arts ami sciences' for a people who, at that time, scarcely knew their intellectual right hand from the left, fully attests the audacity of their faith. They relied upon the efficacy of liberal culture to meet the deeper needs of humanity, and to arouse quickly into life and jxnver the long suppressed possibilities of the newly unfettered race. Much wind has blown over the tree tops since then, ami the sentiments of men have shifted with the changes thereof; hut the ancient foundation still remains. The College Department, as it was then called, was intended to embody the central idea of liberal culture, as the Iwsic principle in the university scheme. Indeed, in any well-ordered institution of higher learning involving numerous professional and semi-professional departments, the academic college must bo the central power station pulsating vital energy throughout the whole. The charter was granted by the Congress « f the United States on March 1st;?. The College Department was organized in September of the same year The chair of Belle litres and tlu chair of l.ntm and Greek were the fir-t to he established. This indicated strongly the stress of emphasis. The first students of the college were attracted from Oherlin and other Northern schools. The higher education of the Negro as a part of a general scheme of race reclamation began with the foundation of Howard University and institutions of like air in other parts of the country. I'p to that time «)berlin College and a few other Northern colleges had welcomed, or accepted, colored students. But these represented only occasional or exceptional individual instances. The experiment of establishing 12

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HISTORY OF TEACHERS COLLEGE The Teachers College i a college of higher education for the training of teachers. It “takes rank with colleges of Art- and Sciences in it scholastic work and with schools of Medicine, Law and Theology in its professional work.” It was founded in lShh by Prof. Lewis B. Moore, Ph.D., who i- now its Dean. It then had one small class of aliout a dozen students transferred from the old Normal Department. to whom courses were open in tin College of Arts and Sciences. From this small beginning, the college has grown to have a student body of nearly two hundred with the opportunity of receiving instruction from thirty-eight professors, teacher-, and instructor-, and of entering academic, profession and technical courses throughout the University. Since 1 !•'.) the Teachers College has granted 155 degrees, three of which arc A. M. degrees. During the same j eriocl of time it has issued 187 diplomas and certificates. Including the normal graduates, the department has graduated IWl persons More than $50 of these have Idled positions ns teachers in colleges, normal schools, academics, high schools, elementary schools, industrial schools, kindergartens, in city and rural communities. They arc distributed among $$ states, District of Columbia, Africa and Philippine Islands. The college has an enviable opportunity t » serve the nation. No M