Monticello College - Echo Yearbook (Godfrey, IL)

Page 6 text:

This year, Monticello is celebrating her centenary. All who know and love her arc focusing their attention on the activities of this, the most important year of her important history. Faculty, students, alumnae, and friends of the college have during the significant months of this academic year, participated in the celebration of her one hundredth birthday. In the pages of this book we wish to record for you the people and the events of both the past and the present, which have made Monticello what she is today. When in 1838 a seminary was opened by Captain Benjamin Godfrey for the purpose of educating young women in the Middle West, it was a new and pioneering project. To place a college out in this newly settled territory, a college for women, seemed a folly, but she has proved to be one of the strongest, most worthwhile, and most enduring institutions in this section of our country. For one hundred years Monticello has been a leader. As the Middle West has grown to its present importance, so has Monticello kept abreast of that growth. At no time has she lagged behind, from the foundation one hundred years ago until the present, but has always been a leading educational institution reflecting the higher material and moral effects of each period of American history. Although Monticello has been a part of a great national development in education, she has remained apart through her own singular charm and individuality. She never has been, and never will be duplicated in what she is and what she has to offer. Monticello gives to those who arc close to her something that can never be gained elsewhere. This individuality is difficult to define. Perhaps it lies in the fact that the college is self-contained. Perhaps in the closeness of contacts and friendships between students and faculty and among the students themselves. Perhaps in the scholastic worth of the school. The explanation may lie in a combination of those factors or quite apart from any one of them. Whatever this spirit that is Monticello, this spirit that sets her apart from all other colleges, we do know that it is embedded in the firm foundations and traditions established by able faculty members, enthusiastic students, who have become loyal alumnae, and friends of Monticello, who realizing her worth have given their valuable support. They have all, through contact with her, formed the same feelings about and ideals for the school. The individuals that have guided Monti-ccllo successfully through the years and led her students have played a part in her history that cannot be overestimated. We feel that Li lALt

Page 5 text:

 MONTICELLO COLLEGE 7L z£jl J1SLU. ■uJ. ECHO PrBUSHEI) BV THE 193 8 K Clio HOARD ■IT MOST I CELLO COLLEGE • GODFREY, . . A (, .y

Page 7 text:

j y:: in recording the centennial year uc must devote a part of this book to those persons. They arc the foundation of Monticcllo. Through their guidance and never failing efforts her building blocks have been laid despite all obstacles and discouragements both great and small. They have understood their duties and obligations so well that they have given the college a firm, continuous, and progressive unity. Monticcllo is proud of her alumnae, as her alumnae arc proud of the college. In their love and hopes for her these women have never ceased their constant interest in and efforts for furthering Monticello. They remain a very real part of the school and exert much worthy influence upon her. Although they have become separated, going to all parts of the world, many of them taking prominent places in the affairs of today, they arc still held together by the tie that binds— the spirit that is Monticcllo. Each one has played her part at some time in the one hundred years that the college has existed, and we owe to our alumnae a large share of our gratitude for what Monticcllo is today. By carrying on the ideals and traditions that have been set for us in the past, we, the faculty and students, arc the Monticello of today. Our activities both academic and extra-curricular make the college a living thing. As we play at sports, take an interest in the arts, form our friendships, and lead our daily lives here in the college, we try to add our part to this rich heritage. W ho can say which plays the more important part, the past or the present? Without the one there could not be the other. The present could not exist as it stands today without the past, and certainly the past would be lost were it not for the present. There can be no doubt that the union of the past and the present, held together by the spirit that is Monticcllo, makes the school what she is today—a leading modern college for women based on the firm foundation of one hundred years of progress.