Tufts University - Jumbo Yearbook (Medford, MA)

Page 20 text:

T O Nils Yngve Wessell, for a better not a bigger Tufts, this 1954 Jumbo Book is respectfully dedicated. At long last our Acting President has become President. The Class of 1954 wishes him well and assures him of its fullest co-operation in all things. The first presidency of Tufts College was established in 1853. One hundred years, seven presidencies and three acting presidencies later, on October 29, 1953, the Trustees elected Dr. Wessell the eighth President. He is eminently qualified for this particular position. As Vice President he was Dean of the School of Liberal Arts, before that Dean of Men, Director of Admissions, and Professor of Psychology. The 1940 Jumbo Book was hopefully inscribed in his honor as a promising young administrator. He was twenty-six years old. These hopes have been fulfilled. At thirty-nine he has demonstrated to the Trustees, to the Faculty, and to the stu¬ dents that no better man could be found to lead in the coordination and administra¬ tion of all of our expansive plans for the Second Century. Oddly enough, Dr. Wessell wanted to be President of Tufts College. Few men ever seek or will accept this particular com¬ bination of triumph and travail. College presidents are public figures, sought on all sides for advice, sympathy, and guidance. They constitute a lonely fraternity of har¬ assed brethren who seek advice from each other and parcel it out to every segment of the population, concisely and on demand. They dash hither and yon at the whim of every organization from the P T A to the National Council on Education. They manage multi—million dollar corporations operating on money which they must con¬ tinue to accumulate. They preside at faculty meetings, committee meetings, com¬ mencements, private dinners, ship launch¬ ings, cornerstone layings, coffees, brunches, and the bedsides of the elderly rich. They are consulted as experts on every branch of education from kindergarten to the post- doctorate curriculum, and on every branch of knowledge from ancient philosophy to atomic fusion. But the special job is the administra¬ tion of one college. To the preparation for this kind of work Dr. Wessell has devoted every waking moment for the past twenty years. When he was an undergraduate at Lafayette College in 1934 he made known his desire to make a career of college ad¬ ministration. By 1938 he had trained him¬ self in psychology to the extent of a Mas¬ ter’s degree at Brown (1935) and a Doctor of Philosophy degree at Bochester (1938) as a teaching fellow in both institutions. While at Brown he practiced as resident psy¬ chologist at the Bradley Home in East Providence, a hospital for behavior and neurological disorders of children. He came to Tufts in 1939 from Ann Arbor where he was director of the Mobile Child Guidance Clinic at the University of Michigan. Dr. Wessell was born in Warren, Penn¬ sylvania on April 14, 1914 and received his early education at Plainfield, New Jersey, where his father, the late Beverend Nils J. Wessell was a Congregational minister. When he arrived at Ballou Hall, he as¬ sumed the task of becoming a Tufts man. Few knew where he came from nor cared. He acted as though he were here to stay — and stay, he did. For fourteen years he has been pondering all that was Tufts, is Tufts, and will be Tufts. Not all men who come to Tufts, students or faculty, become Tufts men. But Nils Wessell did so, and quickly. At first he selected all of the men who were to come to Tufts as students. In all of its history Tufts has never had a larger percentage of topnotch students than in the past twelve years. Every record, every personality, every characteristic of a prospective student had to receive his per¬ sonal approval. Even now students are se¬ lected by men trained in his methods. After