University of Pittsburgh - Owl Yearbook (Pittsburgh, PA)

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1787 1987 Student in the William Pitt Union 20 year before its renovation. Right: Nikita Khrushchev at Pitt in 19S9. At a board meeting on February 16, 1945, John Bowman asked the trustees of the University to accept his resignation as chancellor, effective July 1. He was succeeded as chancellor in 1945 by Rufus Henry Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald inherited an institution that was almost free of debt and was about to enter a ten-year period of unprecedented demand for higher education, much of it subsidized by federal support for veterans in a booming economy. Fitzgerald, who had been a University administrator for many years, noted the effects of the post-war campus expansion immediately. Increased use of admission tests and interviews, coupled with the opportunity of selecting from among large groups of applicants, had given the University the most able student body in (its) history. To accommodate the increased enrollment, Fitzgerald initiated a fundraising campaign to raise the funds necessary to construct several new campus buildings. Out of this campaign came Clapp Hall, Scaife Hall, and Parran Hall. With the addition of these new scientific facilities came exciting developments in research. Foremost among these was the development of the Salk vaccine. Salk and his team of researchers worked round the clock at Pitt's School of Medicine in an attempt to find a cure for the crippling disease. The cure was announced in April 1955 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After nearly a decade of painstaking research, in February 1957, thirty inoculation teams began operating in the Commons Room of the Cathedral of Learning, giving free injections to students, faculty members, staff personnel, and their families. Fitzgerald's tenure marked an era of unprecedented growth for the University of Pittsburgh. His unexpected resignation in 1955 left many questions concerning the future. In July 1955 Edward Harold Litchfield was elected as the University’s twelfth chancellor. Litchfield!s first address was a full-scale formal presentation on December 13 to the trustees assembled in the chancellor's office in the Cathedral of Learning. In a step-by-step progression and with the aid of charts thrown on a screen, the chancellor outlined the factors involved in the announced intention of the board to make the University a top-ranking institution. At first, there was some dissension concerning Litchfield’s plans to bring quick glory to the University. However, as Litchfield's programs began to move forward, faculty resentment was bottled up, or left the campus, or changed to applause. Robinson Miller Upton, president of Beloit College, was exaggerating only a little when he said, The other universities throughout the nation consider the rebirth of the University of Pittsburgh as one of the phenomena of our age.” By the beginning of Edward Litchfield’s fourth year, July 1, 1959, the University had made substantial progress in pursuit of its goal: to attain a level of distinction in its faculty, its student body, and its programs that would ultimately provide the region it served with a quality of higher education equal to the best in the nation. 18 Bicentennial

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had seen in America Litchfield’s desire to carry Pitt into the class of the academic elite progressed into the 1960s. In April 1962 the University began a drive to win a share of the billions of dollars that were being sluiced into the nation's aerospace program. Litchfield set out to sell the region's preeminence in metals and nuclear energy, its complex of research laboratories, and the need for an institution that would channel the ''spin-off' of space technology into industrial and commercial use. He obtained NASA grants of several hundred thousand dollars. Univmily Archive However, Litchfield's numerous capital projects caused a need for greatly increased finances. The money never came in as Litchfield had projected. In a ten-year plan unveiled in 1961, Litchfield had forecast for the fiscal year 1963-1964 a surplus of $730,000. On January 21, 1963, he revised that figure to forecast a deficit of almost $1.4 million. On May 14, 1963, he made another revision and forecast a deficit of nearly $2.1 million. This crisis eventually brought about Litchfield's resignation in July 1965. On September 24, 1959, Dr. and Mrs. Litchfield had out-of-town guests for lunch on the campus. Pittsburgh was the last city Nikita Khrushchev visited on his eleven-day transcontinental tour of this country before he returned to Washington to spend three days in conference with President Eisenhower. The Khrushchev party, arriving at 10:45 Wednesday evening, entered Pittsburgh by way of Mount Washington in order to sec the brightly lighted Golden Triangle. Khrushchev said, ''Wonderful! Wonderful!” and other members avowed that it was the finest thing they Btcenlrnnial 19