University of Tennessee Knoxville - Volunteer Yearbook (Knoxville, TN)

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CHARLES WILLIAM DABNEY

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if: Dedication i TO DR. CHARLES W. DABNEY, who, after sixteen years of devoted and faithful ser- goes to labor in a new field, we respectfully dedicate this volume, as a token H vice to the University of Tennessee, t; of our esteem and appreciation.

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CHARLES WILLIAM DABNEY. MON G the many men who have aided in the industrial and intellectual activity of the South during the past two decades, no one is more widely known than Dr. Charles William Dabney, President of the University of Ten- nessee, and President-elect of the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Dabney entered Hampden-Sidney College, Virginia, in 1869, at the age of fourteen; and having graduated there in 1873, he continued his academic work at the University of Virginia. While in the latter institution, he applied himself to the study of chemistry and related subjects. After finishing his course in the University of Virginia and subsequently spending a year as professor of chemistry in Emory and Henry College, Virginia, Dr. Dabney deter- mined to study in Germany, where he felt that he could obtain the most thorough and inspiring scientific training. Accordingly, going abroad in 1878, he worked both at Goettingen and Berlin, and received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Goettingen in 1880 ' Since his return to America in 1880, Dr. Dabney has been untiring: in his labors for the furtherance of education in the South. For a short while in the year of his return he was professor of chemistry in the University of North Carolina, but resigned to accept the directorship of the Agricultural Experiment Station of that State. His work in North Carolina was of very great importance, for as State Chemist and head of the Experiment Station, he immediately organized an eiiicient force of co-laborers, built laboratories, and inaugurated a thorough and scientific investigation of soils, fertilizers and crops. Indeed, he was largely instrumental in creating the enthusiasm which produced the State Exposition in' 1883, an event which marked the beginning of the present industrial progress of North Carolina. It may be added that later on he also organized the exhibits of the State at the Atlanta, Boston and New Orleans Expositions. This work, however, only prepared the way for a still larger usefulness. In 1887 he was elected director of the Tennessee Experiment Station, and a year later was made President of the University of Tennessee. During his presidency the University has grown from a small college of one hundred and twenty-iive students to a university numbering from six to eight hundred. Here Dr. Dabney has been able to realize in large measure his ideal of educa- tion as a union of classical culture and scientific training. He has succeeded in building up a University that is known throughout the South ; one which furnishes trained men to develop the resources of our section of the country in every line-agricultural, scientific, literary and professional.