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Page 8 text:
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FOREWORD Universities, like cathedrals and parliaments, are a product of the Middle Ages ... in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries . . . there emerge in the world those features of organized education with which we are most familiar, all that machinery of instruction represented by faculties and colleges and courses of study, examinations and commencements and academic degrees. In all these matters we are the heirs and successors, not of Athens and Alexandria, but of Paris and Bologna. — Charles Homer Haskins, The Rise of Universities, page 1. k It is a commonplace observation that mankind has undergone more changes in the past two hundred years than in the previous twenty thousand. The rate of change itself seems to accelerate by geometric progression. Future shocks, information explosions, unforeseen computer applications and energy depletions, rivet our keen attention on the immediate moment and the one about to succeed it. We feel fortunate if we can understand half of what is happening now, and we can hardly guess any of what is about to. Students especially, as questioning men and women with with their lives and professions mainly before them, naturally respond to this bombardment by concentrating on the here and now. Answering the demands of business and technology, they may study computer programming or statistical analysis. Aware of rapid and massive upheavals in the physical sciences, they may elect astrophysics. Knowing the need for clear, accurate communication in business and government, they may choose a course in effective writing. Intrigued or bewildered by modern and post- modern modes of expression in the arts, they may turn to classes in electronic music or concrete poetry. These students may not be aware, though, that by their choices they are following an academic tradition formed over a thousand years ago, when what we know as the liberal arts were delimited. Computer programming develops largely from the medieval disciplines of arithmetic and geometry; astrophysics builds on ancient and medieval astronomy; effective writing is no less a matter today of deploying grammar, rhetoric, and logic tellingly than it was a millenium ago; and music was an established curricular offering when the first universities opened. As for statistical analysis, at least applied to demographics, one of that science ' s most exhaustive triumphs — nine hundred years later — is still the Domesday Book, compiled under William the Conquerer in the eleventh century. Even the most contemporary of academic debate topics, the role of liberal arts education in preparing a student for a career, appears to have been a well-worn subject when John of Salisbury took it up in 1180. If today ' s college and university life continues many centuries-old traditions in any case, life at La Salle College represents an even clearer continuity thanks to the wisdom of Saint John Baptist de la Salle, founder of the Christian Brothers. He came of age during the famous Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, a cultural dispute that raged through Europe for decades, and nowhere more vociferously than in France, where St. La Salle lived. The question, simply stated, was whether tradition or innovation would dominate cultural life; he both symbolized and resolved this conflict through his mission. His social position as an aristocrat and his training as a priest made him look backward to his tradition. The very modeling of his seminary education, codified by headings like canon law and the systematic, dogmatic, and mystical branches of theology, was a tangible triumph of medieval Scholastic organization in full and vigorous action. And while St. La Salle, in his book The Conduct of the Christian Schools, specifically exhorted his Brothers always to rely on tradition as the living source of their work, he also laid great stress on the necessity for keeping tradition alive by looking forward, by being ready to discard the outworn in favor of new pedagogical methods and approaches fitting the needs of particular times and places. His whole life ' s work showed a brilliant gift for vivifying the old by applying it to the demands of the new. It is scarcely any wonder that the whole Church has adopted this great visionary as the patron of all teachers, for he was a man of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. We on this campus can feel especially blessed by the work of St. John Baptist de la Salle as we attempt to further his heritage. If we can step the more confidently into the future, it is in no small way because he has helped us to feel Gratian and Albertus Magnus, Avicenna and Aquinas pushing us there. — Christopher Lucca and Vincent Kling Photo to Right: New College viewed from Hert- ford College Bridge. Photographed in England by Richard Gervson. (
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Page 7 text:
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' Hard, ' Replied the Dodger. ' As Nails, ' Added Charley Bates. — Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist One might think that a man who served in World War II and the Korean War and achieved the rank of colonel, who has been a college professor for over thirty years and was chairman of the English department for fourteen years, and who is a member of one of the most distinguished families in Philadelphia ' s history, might indeed be hard as nails: However, these facts belie the truth about Charles Kelly. He likes to play the role of the stern taskmaster, said his successor to the chairmanship, John Keenan. Yet he really is a very kind, very considerate, very generous person ... Charles Kelly arrived at La Salle in 1947 as a member of the English department, and his contributions over the years have been fundamental and instrumental to the department ' s growth and success. In many ways, Keenan commented, he created and organized the English department at La Salle. But the route Kelly took wandered far and wide before reaching 20th Street and Olney Avenue. Originally, Kelly was an undergraduate student at St. Joseph ' s (then) College. He became a graduate classics major at the University of Pennsylvania. World War II took him out of the Philadelphia area to New England, to Europe, and even to Panama. After the war, he returned to the academic world only to find that the whole field of classics at the University of Pennsylvania had disappeared. After turning to English and the Restoration period in particular, his studies were again interrupted — this time by the Korean War. A background of turbulence such as this often will adversely affect one ' s temperament and vision. Still, although Charles Kelly may have a powerful voice and an overwhelming personality in the classroom, his temperament has not been hardened by experience. He remains approachable and human. If his vision has been affected, his life has only made him more of what he has always claimed to be — a realist. In Oscar Wilde ' s The Importance of Being Earnest, Miss Prism concludes her lesson in literary theory by saying, The good ended happily and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means. If not so cynical as Wilde, Kelly acknowledges that he is no romantic idealist. He believes in practicality — in confronting problems, performing analyses, and searching for solutions. His realism became truly apparent to him when, during World War II on a train to New England, I met two sisters. I said something about the war and one sister turned to me saying ' Shhh! ' The other left the compartment shortly afterwards and, waiting a moment, I asked the one who had hushed me, ' What ' s all this Shhh business? She looked at me and said softly, ' Well, we ' re keeping the war from her. ' From his practicality and realism, Kelly derived a strong sense of duty. As faculty advisor to the class of 1950, he immediately in- volved himself with the students and the institution. As president of the Faculty Senate in 1976-1977 and chairman of the day and even- ing divisions of the English department, Kelly found his administra- tive duties reducing his teaching time, but, said Kelly, There was plenty to keep me busy. His dedication goes so far that on a snowy winter day on which a freshman class was to take its departmental examination, Kelly came in, administered the exam, and then told his fellow faculty members that he had to go to the hospital — he had fallen and broken his wrist coming in that morning and had not said a word! This sort of dedication enables Kelly to concern himself deeply with students. It may seem strange for a student of literature, but Kelly believes that literature is simply a tool. The material I use is simply an instrument. Any tool, any discipline, should teach and permit students to develop powers to adaptation, adjustment, and expansion. Charles Kelly ' s accomplishments here at La Salle extend far beyond curriculum development, department organization, and fac- ulty leadership. He has taught students to read, write, and think with understanding and enjoyment. And though he has given so much, he states, La Salle has been my life since 1947. It has nurtured and sustained me, and I ' m grateful to it. His modesty, ability, and care make Charles Kelly, as the Dodger put it, as ' spectable a genelman as lives ... fj23 — Tom Rodden
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