Stephens College - Stephensophia Yearbook (Columbia, MO)

Page 11 text:

4 i Y .s. '43 l A quarter-century ago the daring dream of a young educator, Stephens College is today his accom- plishment. We pay tribute to the past achieve- ments of President james Madison Wood and willingly entrust the future to his hands.

Page 10 text:

ll ll lil Tl courage and Progress in any institution is dependent upon the intellectual clear vision of the individual who shapes its policies and solves its problems. At Stephens College that individual is President james Madison Wood. For twenty-five years his educational philosophy has dominated its activities and impelled its progress, and those characteristics of a Stephens education which make it unique and distinctive are concrete realizations of his dreams and ideals. Stephens is a student-centered college-'built around the individual girl and molded to her changing needs. An intensive research program is carried on to discover the activities and problems of Women, to improve the content and method of handling the subject matter of each course and to evaluate both con- tent and method in terms ol their value to the student. A divisional, rather than the traditional departmental, organization serves to identify specific courses with the major objectives in the broad fields of science, humanities, social studies, and skills and techniques. Through the years the College has laid emphasis upon the principle that education should function in action, that conduct, rather- than the accumulation of information lor its own sake, is the purpose of educa- V tion. Religious and moral values have been integrated with the regular college program. An atmosphere of easy informality and friendliness characterizes ' en students and faculty. The Stephens student is free to ques- ' ise purpose and responsibility relations betwe ' oomg to gain po , ' ' of her per- tion and experiment in the classr urricular participationsg to develop the possibilities in her extra-c fullest degree. sonality in the

Page 12 text:

ames fvladison Wood . . Born on an Ozark farm in southern Missouri, his schooling begun at the age of three under the guidance of a simple country teacher whose book learning was far surpassed by knowledge of the deep, fundamental truths of living, a teacher himself at the age of sixteen, when he spent half the year as a student in the tiny high school and the other six months in a posi- tion of authority over grade-school children, James Madison Wood early discovered his capacity for hard work and acquired the stableness of char- acter that comes with responsibility. just out of high school he married Lela Raney, and four years later they both were graduated from the State Teachers College at Warrensbtirg. During the following years he served as principal and superintendent of schools in various Missouri towns, finished college at the University of Missouri, and completed his graduate work at Columbia University in New York City. In 1912 he left the department of education of the State Normal School in Springfield to become the presi- dent of a small female academy in Columbia-where to this day he re- mains, but as director of one of the great educational institutions in the country-Stephens College. Visitors wonder at the temerity of a college president who places on his office door the sign Please Do Not Knock and at the unbelievable vitality of that man, who all day long welcomes with an unhurried air and friendly smile the throngs of students who stop in-to discuss college problems, their own personal difhculties, or more often, merely to say a word of greet- ing or just to talk. President Wood cannot appear for a moment on the campus without a knot of young women congregating about him. The door of his home is never locked- his girls we always welcome.