St Louis University - Archive Yearbook (St Louis, MO)

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Very Rev. Robert S. Johnston, S.J.. twenty- fourth president of St. Louis University, now serving his fifth year in that capacity. CONNECTING THE OLD WITH THE NEW Following the principles set down in the Ratio Studiorum, St. Louis University applies the eternal truths of the Catholic Church to every practical problem. THE Challenge of Change, which signifies Progress. is the watchword of this latest Archive. No univer- sity can so well meet the demands of such an ideal as a university conducted under the auspices and influence of the Catholic Church. For the Church, in addition to her unparalleled experience, has a revelation which is not a dead doctrine sepulchered in ancien t tomes; it is a living body of divine truths; it is entrusted to a living organi- zation divinely founded and kept unerring by a living God; it is promulgated and interpreted by a living voice, and as such it is applied by living men to each most recent exigency of their lives. In addition, St. Louis University, directed by members of the Society of Jesus, has her Jesuit educational Magna Charta, the Ratio Studiorum. Of the pedagogic system propounded in this wise and fertile document, Schwickerath, in his Jesuit Education, quoting Genelli, appositely says: It is a plan which admits of every legitimate progress and perfection. ' ■ Hence there need be no wonder at St. Louis University ' s actual historical advance. But through it all, as the Fore- word in her Diamond Jubilee emphasizes, The same spirit, the same love of solid learning informed by intelligent faith and morality, is the invisible link connecting the Old with the New. Robert S. Johnston. S.J. 10 1

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THE REAL ANSWER TO MODERN PERPLEXITIES Catholic education the champion oF sound values and tried principles is the one solution to the problems confronting the modern world. Only here is complete cognizance taken of the influence of God in every phase of human endeavor. IT was the tangible, the reahty of matter, that failed man. Change, confusion, consternation, chaos all are but the disunity of a world groping for new standards that will not shift or change, all are but blind attempts to return to something substantial, something satisfying. The idol of matter and the god of gold have toppled from their places; man, ever anxious to worship some- thing, has raised the State, Humanity, the Prole- tariat, himself to their former eminence, has rein- stated his old gods in new disguises. And, sharply contrasted with the constant change, there is a single standard, unchanging and unchangeable, eternally satisfactory, the only standard with the cure for the cause. ■ Government failed because it had no philosophy; business failed because it had no ethics; man failed because he had no religion. There were pseudo- philosophies, pseudo-ethics, pseudo-religions, but the truth, the Christian truth, had been discarded. There is a single institution voicing authentic claim to that truth. The Catholic Church, translator of His will, does have the solution, does know the way out. And the Catholic university is inextrica- bly bound with that Church. But a university is often removed from the current of the world. It may stand in the heart of a busy city, by it may flow streams of men, but the door of the Catholic college is the door that shuts this little world in itself from the rest of the real universe. Because it moves in realms of thought, because it deals with youth, because it adds religion to the other impracticalities of educa- tion, it seems set apart. And so the university must move with the world, must so move that the principles which she embod- ies can influence the chaos about her. The true Catholic university does that. What others may consider her defect, the fact that she must speak to youth, becomes her strongest asset, for it is platitudinous to say that in youth lies the hope for regeneration of our rotten order. Into the doctrine she gives that youth is infused the leaven of other worldliness. Religion becomes no single course taken and disregarded; it becomes the dominating motif of all education, the correlative of every subject. Spirituality is her purpose; the translation of that spirituality into this world, her duty. ■ But if she should take the plastic clay given her and into that should breathe the suggestion of religion, of dependence on the immaterial, and should stop there, the university would do but half her task. If she would justify her ways and avoid the charge of severance from reality, she must awaken her students to that reality. Educa- tion was never intended to be an opiate, never intended to make men speak of the masses, never intended to draw vapid philosophizing about conflict of principle . When the college class- room becomes a shell for withdrawal from life, it becomes useless. To maintain a sensitivity to problems of the world, yet a certain aloofness from her worldliness — such is the difficult task of the university. Education, Catholic education, supplies to youth thus introduced to life a perspective, a philosophy that places incidents in their proper order, that offers a standard by which all things may be judged. In this lies her leadership. ■ But this leadership, even in a practical sense, cannot end in a purely worldly culture or civiliza- tion. The purpose of Catholicism is not to trans- form Catholics into partisans or to create an economic or political institution, but rather to take truth where it finds it and fuse it into a single workable system. It is in making practical the application of the adjective Christian to our social, political, and economic order that the Church finds her medium. It is in educating men to make that application possible that the Catholic univer- sity succeeds.

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RESPONDING TO THE CHALLENGE OF CHANGE St. Louis University strives to attain the ideals oF true Catholic education by changing her curricula to meet the demands of the times. Although widely scattered, the schools present a unified front against attacks of the modern era. ST. LOUIS UNIVERSITY has always held as its ideal the principles of true Catholic educa- tion, and has endeavored to apply these principles by means of every change in organization and in curricula that would make for the attainment of ideal Catholic education. To achieve such an end, to offer its students the wherewithal to cope with modern problems presented to them upon their graduation from college, to aid in some measure in bringing order out of chaos, and to offer the dazed world some solution to the problems which it has made for itself to these ends has the University directed its curricula and its organi- zation. ■ As modern conditions change, and as new prob- lems make way for still newer ones, St. Louis University must alter and modify its courses, change its method of administration, and present modern answers to modern problems perplexing the thinking world. Her objectives never change, neither does she adopt new principles, nor does she give ground in the truths she has always held — truths which are being made more manifest by the contrast they make with the false notions and mis- leading precepts held by modern thinkers who are rapidly becoming outmoded. ■ St. Louis University has made true progress by taking advantage of the changes that have been made in the scientific and educational fields within the past century. By learning from the errors of the modern world while profiting by its advances, by separating the wheat from the chaff, the Uni- versity has been able not only to continue the practice of educating young men and women ac- cording to the principles set down in the Ratio Studiorum, but even to enlarge the scope of her curricula and thus present to her students a fuller and a more extensive education. At the head of the University is the president, who holds in his hands the guiding power. With eight other members of the faculty he makes up the Board of Trustees in which is centered the power of decision in all affairs which transcend the interests of any one school of the University. The University Council of regents and deans is the foremost advisory body in internal affairs. Within recent years increasing emphasis has been placed upon the Graduate School, inasmuch as it offers opportunity for more extensive learning and greater specialization to the student who already possesses a degree, a specialization made Deans, regents and trustees of the University. Rev. Thurber M. Smith. S.J.. dean of the Graduate School; Rev. Joseph Husslein, S.J.. dean of the School of Social Service; Rev. William J. McGucken, S.J., regent of the School of Education; Rev. Thomas M. Knapp. S.J.. dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Rev. Alphonse M. Schwitalla, S. J., dean of the Schools of Medicme and Nursing. II