Rockford College - Recensio / Cupola Yearbook (Rockford, IL)

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X I 9 The President of Rockford College N October 18, 1902, Dr. Julia H. Culliver was installed as President of Rockford College. The exercises were held in the chapel of the College at three o'clock in the afternoon, and were opened and closed with singing by the Clee Club. Addresses were made by the Rev. William DeWitt Hyde, D. D., LL. D., President of Bowdoin College, Miss jane Addams of Hull House, Mr. john H. Sherratt, President of the Board of Trustees, and Miss Gulliver. Distinguished repre- sentatives of other colleges and many alumna and friends of the College were present. Thus bringing together men and women interested in education and in Rockford College, the occasion aroused inspiring memories of the past and stimulated hopes and plans for the future which are already beginning to be realized in the growth and development of the College. Since 1890, with the exception of one year spent in study, Miss Gulliver had been Head of the Department of Philosophy and Biblical Literature in the Seminary and in the College, and during the prolonged illness of Miss Emily K. Reynolds, she had been Acting President. Miss Crulliver is the daughter of the Rev. john Putnam Culliver, D. D., LL. D., President of Knox College from 1868 to 1872, and Stone Professor of the Relations of Christianity and Science in Andover Theological Seminary from 1879 until his death in 1894. Dr. Gulliver was perhaps best known as a reformer, a close personal friend of Governor Buckingham, the war governor of Connecticut. Before the founding of any of the prominent Colleges for women, he was an earnest advocate of the higher education of Women. The devotion of Dr. Gulliver to the cause of education has been continued in the work of his daughter. Miss Gulliver received her first degree as a member of the first class of Smith College, 1879. ,After some years spent in study, largely under the direction of her father, she received from Smith College in 1888 the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Prom 1890 to 1892 she held the position of Head of the Department of Philosophy and Biblical Literature in Rockford Semi- nary. The following year she spent in Germany doing advanced work in philosophy at the University of Leipsic under the direction of Professor Wilhelm Wundt. From that time Miss Gulliver has been Head of the Department of Philosophy and Biblical Literature in Rockford College, and, much to the satisfaction of all, continues her Work in ethics and Bible. The first work published by Miss Gulliver was Dreams, a thesis presented to Smith College and published in the jezerezezf of Speezeleriwe Plziferephv in 1879. This was followed in 1884 by The Substitute for Christianity Proposed by Comte and Spencer, which appeared in The New Eezgfemeier and Tefe Review. f' Tito Melema was published in The New World in 1895, and in 1897 The Value of Goethe's Thought of God to Us. Also in 1897 appeared Miss Gulliver's translation of Wundt's Facts of the Moral Life, in which she was aided by Professor E. B. Titchener of Cornell University. ln New York, 1900, appeared her Temptation of Mr. Bulstrode: A Study of the Sub-Conscious Self. During these years as a member of the faculty, and now as the President, Miss Gulliver has been thoroughly identified with the interests of the College. lt was with hearty good will and enthusiastic faith that she was welcomed by trustees, faculty and students as President of Rockford College. 7

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Alma Mater l U . There was once a wise, earnest and kindly mother who lived in a grove of oaks on the banks of a great river. 'iNow, when this beautiful young mother began her life on the wooded bluff she was not very Wise, perhaps, in books or in the ways of the World, but her heart was pure and true and womanly. So she gave to her daughters all that she could of knowledge, which meant all that she herself had been able to gain, and she offered to them a still greater measure of the wis- dom that is of the heart and soul, of which she had a goodly store. Thus she lived on the banks of the river, and her daughters with her. And the daughters looking out to the sunset over the murmuring water and the waving forest beyond, wondered, as all young souls must wonder, what was waiting for them beyond the protecting grove. Then when the time came that they must go out in the world, they went half joyfully, half sorrowfullyg hoping, shrinkingg gazing eagerly into the great, wonderful world, yet looking back wistfully to the dear protecting mother, sitting quietly with the younger sisters who were yet with her. And the coming years proved that from the first the mother had given to her loved ones a full measure of the wisdom which she so valued, for none are more loyal to her than these eldest, who went out many years ago. So the years went on. The forest toward the sunset gave way to stern-looking factoriesg but the sunsets were still gold and crimson, and the peaceful river still glided past the brightness, to disappear in the mysterious shadows of the bend below. The beautiful mother grew more learned, and sometimes, perhaps, she looked severe and forbidding, but underneath it all, she still cherished the pure and the true and the womanly, and she still valued wisdom itself above rubies, and counted knowledge as the handmaid of wisdom. . And as the years passed there was also a change in the outward semblance of the maidens sitting in the oak grove. So it happened that some of the elder sisters, returning to drop a caress on the brow of the mother, said in their hearts, Surely, these merry girls have no need of us, no claim on us, for we are not of them. We will go away and remember the mother of our youth as one apart, one who has gone beyond our reach. And the maidens, pausing in the swing of their busy life, stopped and pondered, When we leave, will it be possible for us to forget our little part in the life of the mother? And can we ever forget to care for this story which we are help- ing to make? Surely not, truly, this sister can never have been a real soul daughter of our beautiful mother. But others of the elder daughters, returning, were wiser, and those whom the World counted best and greatest were among them. They looked beneath the changing surface and saw the 9