Stanford University - Quad Yearbook (Palo Alto, CA)

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Stanford ])k ' tc(l — lon ;- since a l)usy lii c uf art and science — and its many rooms Quad th(M-onohly e(iui])pcd. In the same year the Chemical Laboratory was 1904 linished, in its day one of the greatest in the country, but already too small for its multifarious activities. The excellent Gymnasium was completed in 1904, and the University Library, already crowded with its million well selected volumes, the Mecca of investigators from every part of the world, was occupied in 1906. The present Law Library of 40.000 volumes now occupies the building presented by Thomas Welton Stanford. This furnishes a more appropriate home for this great department than the old library of the beginning of the century. The Quadrangle of the Museum, completed in 1904, is now filled with valu- able material from all parts of the world. The native races of Western America and Polynesia are especially well represented. The most recent attraction is the large series of life-size models of the people from Bering Sea to Panama and Samoa in their own houses. Phonographs are attached in the doorways, repeating their daily conversation of these people and in their own tongues. The demand for proper preliminary training in the Department of Medicine has rendered necessary the construction of another build- ing similar in character to the Laboratory in Chemistry. In this build- ing, finished in 1907, the work in Physiology and related subjects is now carried on, the building formerly used for Physiology now being turned over to the Department of Botany. The first three years in the course in Medicine are now given in the buildings on the Campus. Clinical Medicine and those branches needing hospital facilities are cared for in the commodious hospital on the corner of X and California Streets in San Francisco. The physicians and surgeons in charge of this work are professors in the University, employed at generous sala- ries and giving their whole time and effort to the advancement of medi- cal education. The crowning feature of the work in Medicine is the generous endowment for advanced research, the work in this depart- ment being open only to graduates in Medicine. The remarkable results shown in the recent investigation of the contagious diseases of the tropical Pacific have already given the professors of this department a world-wide fame. Since the cessation of necessity for large expenditures in building, the Faculties in Philosophy, Ethics, Comparative Religions, Forestry, , Political Sciences, Archccologv, Pal?eontologv, Astronomv and Art have 16

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1904 of 1912. And why should it not? For the most typical men among the Stanford students of the pioneer days are now the most influential members of Quad the Stanford Faculty. Of all the early Stanford devices, the one which has proved most valuable is the arrangement now generally adopted by progressive insti- tutions, the system of ' Major Professor. ' The Stanford course of study is wholly elective, but the unchecked elective system early adopted at Harvard, was at Stanford from the first subject to a most wholesome modification. One subject must be chosen by each student as his Major Sub- ject, to be taken as a specialty throughout his college and university training. This was the basis of his profession, the backbone of his education. The senior professor in this subject then became his ' major professor ' or t ' .r officio adviser throughout his course, and his choice of elective studies must meet the approval of this professor. The student seeking easy studies without serious purpose cannot maintain the respect of his adviser and thus naturally drops out of the University. By this system, the student is given the widest freedom of choice without the risk of wasting time in wrong subjects, or under the wrong teachers, or in mere pursuit of pleasure. The teacher is stimulated by the pres- ence of earnest students who set the pace to all the others. At the same time all students aiming not at work but at social distinction are dropped from the race. From the first the standards of ' passing ' at Stanford, have been of the highest. The student who can not or will not do his work faithfully day by day has been at once sent away. By letting frivolous men go home, and go home at once, there has been each year less and less occasion for any other form of discipline. Students bent on training themselves to be useful have little occasion to break the laws of common decency. The men who are sent to college mav do this, but the men who go to college have something better on hand. The fees an idler pays never make good the mischief wrought by his influence. Some of our institutions have been slow to learn this lesson, and, in this fact, may be traced one cause of their relative decline in scholarship and influence. The era of building at Stanford, the ' Stone Age ' of its history, began with the year 1900. In 1902, the Great Church, ' The Stanford Minster, ' was finished, to be dedicated early in 1903. In 1903, the Outer Quadrangle, the far-ofif dream of the pioneer days was com- 15

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been completed, and the following new departments have been one by Stanford one added to the Undergraduate College : Horticulture, Geography, Quad Architecture, Naval Engineering, Ethnology, and Palceography. Each 1904 of these is now well housed and properly equipped w ith apparatus and material for its work. ( )n the side of the languages, instruction is now provided in Semitics, in Scandanavian, and in the history and literature of our nearest neighbor, the Empire of Japan. With this great nation, so old and so new, Stanford University stands in the closest relations, and through Japan she already wields a large influence on the still older and still newer Empire of China. A form of research of the greatest practical value is found in the experimental farm of horticulture, where, under the direction of a master in this ancient art, a hundred students are busily engaged in the creation of new fruits, flowers, and grains bv the processes of hybridization and selection. The famous ' INIendelian Law, which attracted such attention ten years ago, has been put here to a thorough practical test. The additions to our knowledge of animal and plant life which have resulted from the experiments in the horticultural farm, the botanic garden, and the breeding insectary, have been notable among the discoveries of the century. Of great value, though attract- ing less attention, have been the explorations of the islands of the Pacific, with the discoveries in Ethnology, Geology, Botany, and Zool- ogy which have resulted from them. The work of advanced investigation has been from the first recog- nized as the highest function of the University. In its pioneer years, the institution stood in the front rank in this regard. During the unfor- tunate years of litigation, while hampered in many ways, with few books and scanty appliances, the pioneer professors gave the I niversity a most worthy reputation for scholarly research. This reputation has been amply sustained and nobly advanced under the most favorable conditions of the last decade. Since 1905, when the University began her own series of publications, with the great Chaucer Dictionary of Dr. Fliigel, no other educational institution in America has produced so worthy a series of monuments of scholarship as have been wrought at Stanford. The number of students is not greatly increased in the last ten years, for it has become the settled policy of this institution to undertake nothing which it can not do in the best possible way. Not many students 17