Temple University - Templar Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

Page 16 text:

ah idea that jwu • • • DR. RUSSELL H. CONWELL Before I say a word about Temple University, I want to talk about an idea. Ideas are more important than institutions. Institutions are the products of ideas. This idea grew out of tho workaday experience of one of America's great preachers. Russell H. Conwell, who began his Philadelphia ministry in the oarly 'eightios, was more than a pulpit orator. His ministry was personal. It took him into hospitals, prisons, and courtrooms and out of the weltor of suffering that was around him and out of what he saw, came the idea! It had been developing a long time. He wrote that poverty —and most of the ills that he encountered seemed to come from some kind of poverty—is basically a poverty of the mind. Lack of food, of clothing, of home, of friends, of morals, or even of religion, is fundamentally nothing but the lack of right instruction. The only charity, therefore, that has meaning, as well as goodness of the heart, is the giving of instruction. The greater gift, Mr. Chairman, is creative. It is a gift of skills, knowledge, and value judgments. Every person should know how to perform a service for which the world has need. He should be given standards to help him find things in life that are valid because they have truth, honesty, beauty, goodness. So equipped, he will not want for anything really needful. A young printer stopped after services, one Sunday night in 1884, and told Dr. Conwell he always had wanted to enter tho ministry but he could not pay for an education. Dr. Conwell assurod him that much could be achieved by evening study and offered to teach him one night a week. The youth asked whether ho might bring a friend. Dr. Conwell told him to bring as many as he liked. When he appeared for the first appointment, he brought six friends. That was the first class, and Dr. Conwell began by teaching them Latin. Forty persons appeared for the third meeting of the group, and at this point Dr. Conwell. literally, had to hire a hall. They did not all aspire to the ministry, but, like the impoverished printer, they hungered for learning, and they had no other means of satisfying it. Growth continued week by week. The next step was the taking over of a small house. A second houso soon was added. After three years, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania granted a charter to Temple College, which by that time had an enrollment of almost 600 students. Nobody sought those students. They had heard of something they needed and they came. How firmly financial obligations were pressed is not clear, but all evidence indicates that students without money but with good minds and a will to work. as Dr. Conwell put it, were never discouraged. 10

Page 15 text:

• • • table erf content A administration.................. of in memoriam . . . ...............20 in tribute.......................22 college of liberal arts and Science..............25 School of business administration................41 teachers college.................65 community college................27 School off theology.............105 school of fine arts.............115 outstanding seniors.............127 honorary Societies..............135 professional societies .... 152 governing bodies................156 greek Societies.................167 organisations...................ISO men S sports....................223 women s sports..................25 features . . . . ...............261 acknowledgment..................30S

Page 17 text:

I don't suppose we could call Dr. Conwell a good business man today. His advisors often told him his institution was financially unsound and ho ought to close its doors. Invariably. he listened attentively but said he thought things would get better. Somehow, they always did. Dr. Conwell thought that the importance of things was in their essence. He once said: Greatness consists not in the holding of high offico, but in doing great deeds with little means. To be great at all, one must be great here, now, in Philadelphia. That, too, is an expression of the Temple idea. It is all part of the pattern on which we have built. I tell you in all frankness not to expect a physical setting of great charm. Those who are accustomed to campuses of conventional beauty—ornate piles of architecture, sweeping expanse of lawns and gardens—will be disappointed in us. Tomple is unconventional in many ways. That has been through necessity. To achieve much with little, we have had to do things differently. Temple University has always held, and still does, that higher education in America costs too much. It has demonstrated that, by modesty of plant and simplicity of administriation, cost can be cut without sacrificing quality. The picture of a log with Mark Hopkins on one end and a boy on the other is still the ideal. But ours is not a problem of one student and his teacher. It is the problem of twenty thousand students and their teachers. Temple is now among the largest universities in America. On its scholarly faculties, we have many exemplifications of Mark Hopkins. We just don't have enough logs. We sometimes try to find out why our students select Tomple. Two or three reasons predominate. Many arc here because of the appeal of cortain departments of instruction. Some find that wo offer training for fields seldom included in the curriculums of smaller colleges. Bigness givos us hard problems, but this is one of its advantages. A second reason is the obvious economic advantage. For many, attending Temple moans living at homo. That is the first saving. Besides that, tuition is low. Furthermore, persons needing outsido employment to pay for their education can almost always be assured of getting it. Finally, the University budgets a large amount oach year for scholarship help for its students. These aro tho ways by which we have held to the Conwellian ideal of education for all with good minds and a will to work. A further explanation which students offer for their choice of Temple is its spirit of tolerance and democracy. We deserve no special credit for the condition creating that feeling. The students themselves produce it. Figures compiled from personnel records, for tho University as a whole, showed in round numbers 7,900 Protestants, 4,000 Roman Catholics, 4,200 Jews. In the undergraduate schools, the student body is divided almost equally among these great faiths. Such a balance of view among people closely associated every day in study, play, and work provides understanding and respect that are certain to carry over into the largor community of which these people are also a part. In tho papers, I read occasionally of race riots in Chicago, or St. Louis, or Detroit. I used to ask myself how these things could happen in our cities when incidents suggesting even remotely such a spirit would be inconceivable in the Temple Univorsity community. Tomple is America in microcosm. It, too, had representations for almost every race, religion, national culture, and economic background. Yet these elements never seem to be factors in questions of place and preferment. The answer is easy. Education is the bridge of understanding. Traveling that bridge every day, young poople learn quickly that color of skin, method of worship, placo of residence, or family occupation is not an index of character or ability. Except for Temple University, or an institution like it, they might never have learned that. Every group tends to seal itself in a ghetto of its own making. That's why Temple University is not moving out. We have a piece of social engineering to do. and we can accomplish it only if we aro close to the heart of things. Instead of going out to search for beauty, we shall create our own in the twilight zone of downtown Philadelphia, where beauty has almost been forgotten. The City Planning Commission has certified for our ultimate uso thirty-eight acros of the congested district North and East of our present holdings. Our task is to redeem it from makeshift and blight with a new campus spaced with modern classroom buildings and laboratories, student residences, and playing fields. Before we are through, it will cost us many millions of dollars. I can’t tell you where so much money is coming from. But when we aro ready for it, it will be there. It will have to be. What Temple is doing in this community today is no longer permissive. It is mandatory. For seventy years we of Temple University have taken the community's sons and daughters, kept them with us for a while, then roturned them to give to Philadelphia and its environs better homes, better schools, better health, more happiness, more civilization, more of God. Out of this has come a partnership. It is too old and too intimate not to go forward! 11 A condensation of the address given by Dr, Robert L. Johnson on November 23. 1954 at the meeting of the Newcomen Socioty.