Southern Illinois University - Obelisk Yearbook (Carbondale, IL)

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Southern Illinois State Normal University Obtains lull Recognition as a College by North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. (George D. Wham, Dean of Faculty) 0 n Friday morning of last week President Shryock who had just returned from the 1931 meeting of the North Central Association filled the cup of our satisfaction to overflowing with the announcement that the North Central Association had accorded to our school full recognition as a College. We can now rejoice in the possession of a college distinguished by the highest obtainable rating at the hands of each of the three great standardizing agencies: The American Association of Teachers’ Col- leges; the University of Illinois; and the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools—a recognition in very case without deficiencies or conditions, thus placing us beyond the necessity of further inspection. It is especially gratifying to observe that our college is now not only a teachers’ college of first rank as judged by the high standards of the American Association of Teachers’ Colleges, but also a college as judged by the University of Illinois and by the North Central Association. This unique two-fold distinction is due to the fact that we meet not only every requirement of a standardized teachers’ college with respect to professional training, but also every requirement of the liberal arts and sciences college both as to kind and amount of training in prescribed subjects, and the selection and composition of majors and minors. Discerning persons in school and out of school will not be slow to sec the significance of all this. It means that we have a bona fide college of first rank, in consequence of which graduates from our four-year course may know themselves to be as genuinely college graduates as they would be from the course of any other college of whatsoever name or location. It means that graduates of our four-year course arc eligible without question to teach in any North Central High School. It means T wmly-itvcM

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that graduates of our four-year course can enter without condition or penalty the graduate school of any North Central University and achieve a master’s degree in the major subject in the same time as that exacted from the graduates of the university itself. It means that a student may, if he chooses to do so, transfer at the end of any year to any other college or university without loss of time or credit. It means, in a word, that the status of our college is now such as to be a source of pride to the student who is doing his work here, and a source of prestige to the graduate who asks elsewhere for recognition or preferment. The great achievement involved in obtaining full recognition from the three great standardizing organizations has not come about by accident, or favoritism, or mere superficial manipulation. It has come through the demonstrated development of the school. To effect this development it was necessary to make a multiplicity of changes, among which were the following: the limitation of college enrollment to grad- uates of four-year recognized or accredited high schools; the rigorous separation of high school and college both as to classes and teachers; the increase in the size of the faculty to conform to restrictions as to size of classes and amount of teaching load; the improvement in the scholarship of the faculty to conform to requirements as to academic preparation; additional provision for laboratory floor space and laboratory equipment; the improvement of library facilities both as to size of reading rooms and number and quality of books; the meeting of new requirements as to physical education and health service; the increase in the size of the senior college as to number enrolled and number graduated so as to reduce the disproportion between senior and junior colleges; and the rewriting of our curricula to make them conform to the standards imposed by each of the three standardizing agencies. It has been a difficult road over which President Shryock has had to take the school from where it was to where it now is. It had to be traveled with discouraging handicaps in the persistent lack of money, and often a lack of sympathetic understanding of what we had already accomplished, T wemly-eliltl