University of Kentucky - Kentuckian Yearbook (Lexington, KY)

Page 33 text:

 PROF. GILLIS came to the University in 1907 as a professor in the Depart- ment of Education. He was later appointed Registrar of the University and Secretary to the President. In all his connection with the University he has ever proven himself possessed of a spirit of progress. In his work he has bent every energy toward the movements that have introduced system into the work of the colleges and the administrative offices. Prof. Gillis has joined heartily in every move that has tended toward a co- operative government that would maintain good will between the students and faculty. The high degree of success that has resulted from his work has been recognized by the National Association of Registrars, of which he has been Secretary-Treasurer since 1913. Quiet by nature, but accompanied by a firmness that is to be admired, he is possessed of a happy way that has won for him many fast friends and admirers.

Page 32 text:

During President Barker’s administration the law department has grown under Dean W. T. Lafferty’s leadership from an enrollment of 46 students to an enrollment in 1915-16 of 124, 102 of whom are of college standing, with a similar large enrollment for 1916-17. During his administration also the department of Journalism was estab- lished with an enrollment of 35 students in 1914, that has grown to 91 in 1917. The College of Home Economics has shown similar growth, until to-day it is one of the most widely recognized colleges treating this subject in the South. In the field of debate and oratory, records show that students of the University have won considerably in excess of 75 per cent of all contests in which they have been entered in the last seven years. Space forbids entering here into more than a brief recital of the achievements of President Barker’s administration. It is perhaps to the man himself that the greater interest on the part of the student body attaches. Benevolent beyond the manifestations of most men, entirely in sympathy with his “boys and girls” in all that touches their interest and their welfare; in love with young life in all its ambitions and its hopes; with immeasurable desire to bring them to higher and truer standards of citizenship, and with abundant fidelity to the institution that is the cap sheaf of the Commonwealth’s system of education, he has been amply repaid by the affection and loyalty of all those who have had the good fortune to come in contact with him during their collegiate life. President Barker is an intense believer in men and women. His invariable policy has been to select men in whom he could repose confidence for positions of leadership and then demand of them the best that they could give in service. His problems have been many, but he has never faltered. He has had enemies—few men there are who have not—but he has met all in the spirit of fairness and justice so characteristic of his whole life and has done the day’s work as it presented itself, with confidence, with integrity of purpose, with lofty courage, and with single hearted loyalty that have been at once an inspiration to his comrades and an example to the student body. (28)

Page 34 text:

Dean Miller College of Arts and Science PROFESSOR A. M. MILLER stands at the helm of the College of Arts and Science and directs Its varied courses in a satisfactory manner. The perpetual growth of this college is strong proof that its pilot is eminently suited to direct its work. Professor Miller is devoted to Geology, which he still continues to teach despite the demands made on his time by his Deanship duties. The faculty under his supervision, which is the largest of any of the colleges, has been gathered from widely different institutions as regards their preparation, and maintains a very high reputation for ability and scholarship. (30)