University of Illinois - Illio Yearbook (Urbana Champaign, IL)

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TEN YEARS OF PROGRESS ®en §tav£ of $rogres tn tfje Umbersrttp of SUtnote F a true measure of progress is to be taken it must cover a consid- erable period of time. The day as it passes may be instinct with advancement but an adequate expression of it cannot be separated from the bulk and clutter of the day's work. The years teach much that the days fail to show. In reviewing the history of the University of Illinois during the past decade one cannot but be struck by the fruitfulness of its accomplishment. Everywhere now its work is the work of authority. Men of the highest scientific attainments come here to take positions and graduates of the best Colleges and Univer- sities at home and abroad are coming for graduate work and men of such calibre and maturity do not come through chance — they are drawn by opportunity. Nor with expansion has the University lost the rugged individuality that char- acterized it at its founding. While traditional subjects of study have been strength- ened and developed, the standard in expansion has not been conformity to educational authority nor to what outside educators expect, but to what is needed to widen opportunity for the student and for the people of the State itself. President Edmund Janes James who came to the University in 1904 is himself an Illinois product, voluntarily serving his native state. Twenty-two years in the Corn-Belt and twelve of them in the service of the educational institutions of the state has prepared him to know the needs, the conditions, the limitations, and the folks with which he had to deal. Then too, the fifteen years in the institutions of the East and Universities of the old world had given him breadth of vision and experience. And comprehensive knowledge is a safe basis for large accomplishment. The accomplishment was possible because the foundations of the University were in the beginning laid true. Johnathan B. Turner invoked the spirit for the work when he said as early as 1851 that to artisans, merchants and farmers was • ''fflifeSRr . i StaK A Distant View of the University n

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THE PRESIDENT upon its own feet instead of where its first concern must be to keep off the. corns of individual legislators. During the presidency of Doctor James he has been significant in meeting the people directly. They are taken into the class rooms and confidence of the University as never before. Nor is the President's vision in affairs educational confined to his own state. He is at present working for a federal grant to elementary and secondary education for vocational training. It would do for the secondary and elementary schools what the Land Grant Act has done for the Universities. He is also working on a plan for a National University to be located in Washington, D. C. It will accept only graduate students. It would be unfair, to leave President James without some mention of his womenfolk, as no force yet discovered can do more to make or mar a man. He was fortunate in his chance of a mother and his choice of a wife. His mother was a woman of unusual poise, being herself always; and no echo of another. She had an unusual reverence for the teaching profession and that reverence she has been able to hand down liberally. Besides President James, in educational work, another son is Dean of the College of Liberal Arts in the University of Minnesota, and two are professors, while a daughter left teaching to become the wife of the president of Girard College. His wife (nee Lange), is the daughter of a well-known divine of Halle. She is a woman of keen perception; this combined with the breadth of vision given by an unusual education has made her able intelligently to cheer when affairs seemed too tangled to admit of cheer. Nor has she kept her encouragement at home as many a homesick bride or worried young mother in the field of her husband's work can testify. The President and Mrs. James have two sons, Anthony, a lieutenant in the U. S. Navy, Herman an assistant Professor of Political Science in the University of Texas, a daughter, Helen, at home, and a very youthful grand- child, the daughter of Professor Herman James. I'ki Mm i mi Mrs. Edmund [anes James and Family 10

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TEN YEARS OF PROGRESS due as adequate educational courses as lawyers and doctors were receiving. And, he added with pertinent sturdiness, it is our own fault that we do not also enjoy them. Is not that the spirit that would hitch the worker's wagon to a star and make a chariot of it? The first president, or regent, as he was called then, John Milton Gregory, served the University in its youth through thirteen trying years. He urged higher education upon the young people of I he state often at a farmer's gathering from the back of a farmer's wagon. And he held fast to the spirit that would offer science to the tiller of the soil and the engineer at a time when the spirit was strug lim;- sadly with financial need and discouragement. During the presidency of Dr. Selim II. Peabody, who followed Dr. Gregory in 1880, the Agricultural Experiment Station was founded, a strong factor in the future development. When Dr. Pea- liody resigned in 1891, Johnathan T. Burrill, Professor of Botany and Horticulture, was made ac ting president. He had come to the University in 1868 and he under- stood its needs and problems thoroughly. The period of his service was one of marked expansion made possible by the absolute frankness with which Dr. Burrill asked for large sums of the legislature instead of curtailing his requests to the lowest possible amount. During this time the Graduate school was organized, the first fellowships instituted, and the faculty authorized to define the requirements for doc- tors' degrees. Also the departments of Municipal and Sanitary Engineering were created as well as that of Architectural Engineering. In 1894 Dr. Andrew Sloan Draper came to the University as president. During his administration the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the College of Dentistry and the School of Pharmacy, all located in Chicago because of the excellent clinical facilities, were added to the University. The State Library School was established in Urbana, also the College of Law, and the Engineering Experiment Station. The social interest of the student body began to press their claims insistently upon a busy faculty. Students often needed advice and no one had time to give it; moreover liberty was frequently tweaking the sober nose of justice when those in authority were greatly occupied in mind; therefore a Dean of Women and a Dean Railway Locomotive Testing Laboratory 12