University of Minnesota - Gopher Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN)

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BOOM TIME: MINNESOTA GROWS UP In ilie calm, unharried atmosphere of North rop’s administration, much was done to strengthen and consolidate the University. Expansion began in earnest. The Regents and the new president were willing to work together — something that hadn’t happened in a long time. The result, in part, was a rise in school enrollment from MO to 6,000, and a construction program which transformed a small cluster of four or five buildings into a campus of 40. One of Northrop's most stalwart partners during those years of development was Maria Sanford, professor of rhetoric and elocution. Some of her contemporaries considered her more preacher than professor, for she spoke from the pulpit whenever she could get the opportunity, and when she had no pulpit, she would pretend she did. During her 29-year stay at the University she averaged at least one lecture per day, aside from her regular teaching lectures. In 1909 she became the first woman in history to deliver a commencement address at a large university. Maria Sanford I8( 9-1884 William Walls Fol well 1884-1911 Cyrus Northrop 1911-1917 George lid gar Vincent 1917-1)20 Marion l.cRoy Hutton PROBLEMS: AGRICULTURE AM) ENGINEERING Cyrus Northrop and William Watts Folwell, 1921 Northrop had a big problem centering around the Agriculture school. From its beginning in hS67, matters had not gone well for this school. Minnesota farmers could see no reason to send their children to a place of higher learning in order to learn farming. In the first year only one student registered at the farm school. In the second year registration dropped by one. Then it was pro|xiscd that the farm school lx- separated from the main campus, and that William M. Liggett be the first dean of the new school. Liggett was a strong, decisive leader, and under his tutelage the School of Agriculture began to grow. By 1910 it had an enrollment of 1,500. T he School of Engineering also was having its troubles about this time. In 1892 William Kirchner arrived from the East to begin a class in industrial designing. Then he switched to teaching a class on painting, hardly a legitimate engineering course. The class was hurriedly discontinued when it was discovered that coeds were registering for it. The idea of girls in the School of Engineering was incompatible with turn-of-the-ccniury morals. Page 21

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VISION: PATIENT BUT PERSISTENT In the latter days of Pol we IPs administration the Regents carried on a painstaking investigation of the faculty to evaluate their fitness as teachers. The result: Six out of 20 on the stall were asked to hand in their resignations. Folwell filled the newly-vacated positions hy importing graduates of Harvard, Yale and Princeton and promising them salaries of SI.5(H) a year. Three years later, 1883, Folwell presented his own resignation to General Henry Sibley, chairman of the Board of Regents. But he remained president until July, 1884. when Cyrus Northrop succeeded him. Folwell, however, did not leave the University. He spent many more years on campus — probably happier ones — first as a professor of political science and later as librarian. As the years went by and the University grew, his figure-loomed large as the man who, in the nineteenth century, was able to see the twentieth. As James Gray, professor of English, has (minted out, In all his administration Folwell did not offer a plan, a policy, a theory that was not in sympathy with present day ideas of education. But his vision was sometimes one of his greatest sources of irritation and frustration. He was forever appearing before the Regents with new plans and new ideas, all designed to develop his genuine university. And the Regents were forever looking upon him and his ideas with a good deal of suspicion. For they were immersed in jxrtty details and issues of the day. Through it all Folwell remained extraordinarily patient but no less persistent. It was as if he was perfectly certain his ideas eventually would win out, although perhaps not in his lifetime. I le lived to be %, having spent his later years writing his monumental history of Minnesota. In this way he was able to remain on campus and see some of his long-protested programs put into practice and prove workable. Old Main, limit I85( , destroyed by fire in I'M! NORTHROP: “PR EX Y”TO IIIS STUDENTS Cyrus Northrop':, first glimpse of the University campus prompted him to label it a dun and dreary place, but he soon came to regard students at the University as members of his own family. Students called him Proxy. Perhaps his chief goal as president was to prove to the world that, contrary to the storm of accusations, the University was not godless. This he did merely by his presence. Northrop had such a saintly air that no one could conceive of his heading a godless institution. I’ntee hull and the Institute of Child Welfare, completed by 1890 Page 20 1

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1920-1938 Lulus Della Coffman 1928-1941 Guy Slanlon Lord 1941-1945 Walter C. Coffey 1945- I a met Lewis Morrill AFFER MEDICAL REFORM: A FASTER TEMPO FOR TIIE CAMPUS At a time when private “medical schools in the state were producing an alarming number of quacks, the University School of Medicine was Ixginning to act like an adult. In 1X92 the school curriculum span was lengthened to eight months and was extended to include 10 lectures in embryology and 32 in pathology. Two years later, the Regents, inspired by a more than customary vision, made-medicine a four-year course. Within a decade of Northrop’$ resignation, the University Medical school had absorbed all the private schools around the state. No one wanted Cyrus Northrop to resign the presidency, except, perhaps, Cyrus Northrop. He was well loved and honored. Still, his second letter of resignation was accepted in 1909. His successor was George Edgar Vincent. With Vincent's arrival the curtain fell on Northrop’s re- laxed, genial scene. Vincent was a reformer and a businessman, and he Stepped up the tempo of campus life. Though he was unjustly considered by some to be “aristocratic and arrogant, he succeeded in gaining the confidence of both the student body and the faculty. As one-professor said, he was a professor's ideal of a president.’' Vincent’s own ideal of what a University president should be. called for “. . . a man who is radical in ideals but strong and conservative in action, a man who knows that the world has changed and changed rapidly in the past few years and who is capable of leading the new order. His aim was to build a faculty capable of original research and of producing “high-minded citizens. “The University campus, lie said, “must be as wide as the boundaries of the Commonwealth. VINCENT: NOT SO GENTLE REFORM The 47-year-old Vincent immediately set out to make some necessary changes. The Law school had previously been a sanctuary for football players and “intellectual misfits. Vincent strengthened the teaching staff and curriculum and made it into a bona fide place of education. Next he looked over the situation in the Medical school, and saw that it was greatly in need of qualified, full-time teachers. I Ic promptly asked for the resignations of the entire staff. This was by no means a mass suicide, it was merely a complete reorganization, for most of the original start were reappointed. This time, however, teachers were hired on the strength of lour basic principles: character, “teaching ability, “prestige . . . indicated in pari by contributions to science, and “past service to the college.’’ Vincent also revamped the Graduate school (under the dcanship of Guy Stanton Ford) the Arts college and the College of Education. In less than a decade he hail turned the University upside down and then set it on its feet again. Presidents Fuiwcll, Ford anil Coffman at IJ nary dedication, 1924 P«3c 22