Vanderbilt University - Commodore Yearbook (Nashville, TN)

Page 13 text:

Af f. 1, UA HS X ,I N 6 Rx un US If 'Q 10, NI If I, x I u com 1 x Q QQ 'W xx mI .I 'L L. in ufc I -' IC I -I OFFICE OF CAMPUS PLAINING X 5 X , ' W '- I -+ ' Q X 4,55 .-x i ' d X ' 4 1 4 ' .V Q 4445 .zvxv I . . .+I 3' 'S ' '1 I I n ' ' v ,Q r .tw ,sgv O . ., . ,ew : M I IV' I' '. Q' I' Q' ,,.w I x I jeux 0 ig .xi K. X .43 I I I-A - I , I Q I X llliullillul u X X I , 4. , .1 .Q ,Q .p E I I, I' f' S v xx ' H f y s ' Ke, s E : I , tl X+ I 'I I I - I We .x 1 4 ' I' .HQ ' : '45 ,px X' I E l- . , I N - ,R : - W I 'N -I I ': I I -Q X 'A X' i E: nn Quran: '15f,,,,,- 1 : :I L x :ll0Ol0O0ll:0S00OOLl, :zu-sawing, ! I N-Q f all I I H l' I, Vox x q V: IV p. :Z I .. . t I if il: I J I I I I , :l II' U r 'i :Q ii - :E I ,ff I I ll 'A4,, 1 ,QQ I , : UE? I I L' I. .. u intl' X fgx ' 5 .. : n : . N ly 'XXX Q N, ,, - f: B 'll X E, ..,. f, ,s : I ., e o V 3 E I ' F, A-R 4,- I ' :' :Q T laura I I ' I' ' ' U S : - n 11 L .I KA A XB 6 : :I A : , xlux N 4 X J ,Qs o : U S2400 : X, , X -. unucvu Q' ,H Q- !l.!!rg4nu: lL:!!!gu:-f' rf'-'urn -.iii I - .X E+ X X A 4.11-I.l l.vl f' . -1 Q f fx - TM xi V fy XX u ,. X ,E .L an 1 , Y. ,X I QA XY -1 V , Tunica: Av: I I L1 IL I I t 'Nb' PLATFORM FOR DEVELOPMENT ,HE v,,,,DE,.,,.L, ,,,,,,E,,S,,, LAND USE PLAN NASHVILLE TEMESSEE

Page 12 text:

V X :A . A . . , A' lg: ,- Q , wp, 4? 4 X , X -.-T S C : ,u:'.,:,, -4, Q- .', ,', 6 I THB SECOND CENTURY

Page 14 text:

f'7 X Comments for the 1974 Commodore by Alexander Heard, Chancellor, Vanderbilt University: As Vanderbilt begins its second century, I cannot help reflecting on the feelings of the first Chancellor when the University opened 100 years ago. All Vanderbilt's chancellors have been filled with gratitude, determi- nation, and hope. All have faced a future weighted with difficulties, some known in advance, some not. Chancellor Landon C. Garland worked in a world that moved more slowly, however, and it is fair to say that he was plagued less than his successors by conscious uncertainty about the future conditions under which his university would function, and especially less than a Vanderbilt chancellor today. As it turned out, whatever stability in the social environment Chancellor Garland assumed would continue in the years ahead was radically altered. In turn, Vanderbilt's own nature was radically altered during its first century, suggesting the difficulty of seeking now to look ahead to the university's future in a different second century when changes will probably be even more rapid and fundamental. Chancellor Garland was a profesor of physics and astronomy, and also a mathematician, and was well equipped to appreciate the dynamic force of scientific discovery and invention. Yet I find no prediction from him of the avalanche of technical innovations that would follow the founding of Vanderbilt and have profound impact on the societal institutions, cultural values, intellectual insights, occupational pat- tems, and educational expectations that largely mold a university's life. When the comerstone of the building that is now Kirkland Hall was laid April 28, 1874, there was no telephone, phonograph, automo- bile, airplane, radio, television, photocopier, computer, antibiotic drug, nuclear fission, subcellular research, nor any of a multitude of other creations and highly sophisticated systems of knowledge that have made ours a new world. The rate of change has so accelerated that when Vanderbilt opened its newest school, the Graduate School of Management, in 1969, the 8 I THE SECOND CENTURY School's proclaimed purpose was to train managers of change, leaders for whom change was not a condition of transition from one previously normal state to a new one, but rather was the continuing state of the social environment, the norm itself. ln retrospect, it would have been futile to expect Chancellor Garland to look very far ahead into Vanderbilt's future, the task is just as ambitious today. li If one looks back, in fact, instead of ahead, it is easy to despair of the whole enterprise of education, past or future. Mr. Garland, speaking in 1870 in Memphis at the General Conference of the Method- ist Episcopal Church, South, three years before he was to become Chancellor, observed as follows on the relationship between education and human welfare: Never was there a greater mistake than that which is becom- ing so prevalent at the present day, thatmere intellectual culture is of itself adequate to exalt the virtue and secure the happiness of a people. It was never so at any period of the world. The contrary is susceptible of the clearest proof from the history of our race. In all nations, the periods of greatest literary distinc- tion have been the periods of greatest moral corruption, as witness the Periclesian age in Greece, the Augustan age in Rome, the Elizabethan in England, the Republican in France, and the present in America. Education was never more widely diffused throughout the United States than now. Never was there more ado about it. Never were institutions so multiplied. Learning was never more highly valued and sought after, as a means of reducing the laws of nature, and the properties of matter, to human controL and contributing to national and individual wealth and power. . . . Has the virtue of the people increased with their knowledge? Are our public men more patriotic, more self-denying, more honorable, more true to compacts, and more trustworthy than they were fifty years ago? Are the morals of the people improved? Is there less of crime and lawlessness in proportion to population? Alas! to all such inquiries there comes up a negative response which is well-nigh universal.And yet education is, with a vast number of persons, the agency which is to bring us to the perfectibility, so called, of our nature. Mr. Garland was arguing for education under the sponsorship of a Methodist Church that he dearly trusted. He would count heavily on the religious character of the contemplated institution to ensure its pursuit of a higher education conducive to positive social values, where students might receive the largest intellectual culture without detriment to their moral habits and religious sympathies. While the University and Church would part company after four decades, there is little evidence at Vanderbilt or elsewhere that the formal seculariza- tion of some of our colleges and universities can be held accountable for the present intensified form of the difficulties Mr. Garland observed a century ago. The relationship of intellectual culture to moral values and socially useful purposes remains today, nonetheless, a crucial iwue in Vanderbilt's and Americas future. Intellectual capacity distinguishes the human from other forms of life. The first concern of a university is the enhancement of that power. The university is also concerned with the ultimate results. I have never thought that rationality and morality impeded each other, that ra- tionality somehow eschews values. Much the contrary. In the human conduct they commend, highest morality and ultimate realism are one. We have been concerned on the campus during the Centennial period to examine the uses of knowledge, the consequences of knowing. Van- derbilt's task ahead, as it has always been, will be to make itself an ever more useful social institution, useful in the broadest reach of that concept. Vanderbilt pursues this goal chiefly by working to en- hance the quality of thought of all who are azsociated with it. To accomplish this task requires certain conditions. The University must