Wabash College - Wabash Yearbook (Crawfordsville, IN)

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THE WABASH COLLEGE PLAN PRESIDENT LOUIS B. HOPKINS Sometimes people who visit us are disappointed not so much because of our shortcomings as because of their own misunderstanding. Some have been disappointed because Wabash College is located in Crawfordsville in- stead of Wabash, Indiana. Others regret that the College is situated on Sugar Creek, and not on the banks of the Wabash . The location of the College has to do with the whole educational program, however. Craw- fordsville was first settled in l822. Wabash College was founded in l832. Thus, for one hundred years, or for almost the entire life of the community, Crawfordsville has been a college town. Crawfordsville has a population of l0,000. The College is located on the edge of this interesting and dis- tinctive town in a heavily timbered tract of land. It is the only privately endowed, nonsectarian, liberal arts college for men in our section of the country. We have an enrollment of 4OO students, a Faculty of 32 members, an endowment of S2,200,000, a library of 71 ,OOO volumes, and no stadium. We offer no graduate courses and grant only the one degree of Bachelor of Arts. With this background you can perhaps visualize the College asl speak of its plans and program and the point of view out of which these have developed. An undergraduate at Wabash, in a letter to a high-school senior, wrote: l shall speak in terms of the benefits the individual derives from the Col- lege, for after all it is what we ourselves get out of the College that in- terests us and influences our decisions. This undergraduate has written in a sentence the gauge by which we measure our whole educational plan- the benefits the individual will derive from the College . We strive to offer the opportunity for the highest possible development of the individual, and everything we do is evaluated in terms of its effect on the individual. We claim no monopoly of the idea. We have no undue pride of auth- orship. We borrow ideas freely from other institutions. If any institution has worked out a course or adopted a device that we believe will improve our technique, we adopt it. We have been so liberal in accepting other peopIe's ideas that I cannot possibly give credit where credit is due. Nev- ertheless. the combination of other foIk's ideas with a few of our own has given us a plan which is in perfect harmony with the past history of Wabash College, and with the opportunity that lies ahead of us as a non-coeduca- tional college of liberal arts located in the heart of the Central West. This brings me to the first essential in our educational plan. We are agreed that we shall attempt only one type of education, that is, an under- graduate course in liberal arts. We believe this type of education con- tributes directly to clear thinking as well as to sound knowledge, and that both are important in individual development. lf we are going to do all we can to provide opportunity for the highest possible development of each student, we must keep our enrollment down to a number with which it is possible for us to work on a personal basis. I do not mean a situation in which some one or two teachers and an adviser know the student, but rather a group in which it is possible and reasonable for all of us actually to know each other. l am not unmindful of many things we must sacrifice if we adhere to this principle of so restricted an enrollment. From the financial standpoint alone, it restricts income unless general endowment can be increased to re- lieve the pressure for more funds. However, in my opinion the answer to this problem lies not in increasing our enrollment in order to get more money, but in doing so good a job of education that friends with money will desire to help us in our work. lC0ntinued on page 86l i l. W 'NX SiS

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