Southern Illinois University - Obelisk Yearbook (Carbondale, IL)

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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

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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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or would be able to accomplish. It was a road that had to be traveled always by slow degrees from one inspection and classification to another, through the successive removal of conditions that barred the way. Eighteen years ago our college had no assured standing, the graduates from it having to take their chances of recognition on the uncertain basis of judgment elsewhere as to individual merit and work. Five years ago we became a Class B college at the hands of the University of Illinois, which classification meant that our graduates entered the graduate school but with a potential penalty of sixteen hours to be escaped only by a demonstration of superiority. Three years ago we became a Class A teachers college in the American Association of Teachers’ Colleges, but with three deficiencies or conditions. One year ago, having worked off these conditions, we obtained full Class A rating from the American Association. One year ago also we were granted full Class A standing as a liberal arts and sciences college by the University of Illinois, which institution has been throughout our generous and consistent friend. And this year, as announced, we have made the final achievement of full recognition at the hands of the North Central Association. Such magnificent development in the face of difficulties so great has been fundamentally due to the administrative genius of President Shryock —his creative imagination, his skillful, patient, and tireless struggle with untoward circumstance. During eighteen years his work by day and his dreams by night have been directed toward an emergent college that might stand before the world unabashed and without apology. His dream has been realized through the transformation of a normal school into a college—a college of such merit as to arrest the attention and arouse the admiration of informed educators far and near. Nor will he permit progress to cease. Objective standards having been met, his attention now will be turned, as he himself has declared, to the further improvement of the subjective and far subtler conditions that determine teaching efficiency by which the real worth of any college at all times must be measured. —Adapted from the Egyptian of March 25, 19)1. T ucnly ■» » ■