Western Michigan University - Brown and Gold Yearbook (Kalamazoo, MI)

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I have taught at the Northern State Normal eight years and enjoy the teacher training work very much. My department is growing rapidly and our aim is to specialize in the training of Grade and Junior High School teachers. I have as my assistant Frank R. Martin, Western Normal 12 who has been an important factor in the development of the Manual Arts Department at Northern Normal. Since leav- ing Western Normal I have continued my preparation, having spent seven summer sessions at various colleges and universities and in the future plan to spend a year in residence at University of Wisconsin. IVIrs. McClintock (Myrtle Hayward) myself and our two sons, David (eleven) and Walter (five) are living at 1023 North Front St. and would be glad to hear from any of our old friends. May I through Brown and Gold send greetings and best wishes to the faculty, Alumni and students.

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of Rural Education. I remained there for three years, then came to the Massachusetts Agricultural College at Amherst, Massachusetts, as head of the Department of Rural Sociology, a position I still hold in addition to my other work. In 1918 I was made Director of Short Courses in this college. We have numerous short courses, ranging from two weeks to two years in length, a student body of seven or eight hundred stu- dents during the course of a year. I am supposed to direct these activities, academic and otherwise. A friend of mine, in Amherst College, an institution in the same town, made such a pertinent remark in regard to my duties, that I give it in closing. He asked me what I had to do, and I tried to tell him. ' Ah, ' he said, ' I see, I think that your duties are not very clearly differentiated from those of the janitor. ' With best wishes for all ' Westerns ' . Yours very truly, JOHN PHELAN. WAYNE B. McGLINTOGK Western State Normal — Manual Training ' 09 It gives me great pleasure to recall the days I spent as a Manual Training stu- dent in the Western State Normal. Most of the work of the department at that time was done in the old Kalamazoo Manual Training Building at the corner of West and Vine streets. I have looked back many times to the careful instruction imparted and the sympathy given to his students by Geo. S. Waite, then head of the department. His instructions have ever been an inspiration to me in my work. During the school years of 1907 and 1908 there were about ten men in the Manual Training Department. I recall vividly such men as Ted Sowle, Earl Gar- ringer, Walter Wheater, Tub Myers, Harry Whitney, Gerald Whitney, Cliff Ball, Doc Huff and others. The equipment of the shops at that time was small and inadequate but in my few years of experience I have come to the conclusion that the physical properties of a school have little to do with the fundamental training of students. The small classes and personal touch I had with the faculty at that time was of more value to me than more technical training would have been. Four men completed the Manual Training course in 1909, namely: Melvin Myers, Director at Port Huron; (lerald Whitney, Assistant State Director of Indus- trial Education, State of Pennsylvania; Harry Whitney, Oshkosh State Normal, Osh- kosh, Wisconsin ; and myself. My first position was to establish the Manual Training Department in the Benton Harbor schools where I taught and coached Athletics for three ' ears. I then went to Marquette, Michigan, as supervisor of Manual Arts. I had four assistants in the department. After two years in this work I was elected Principal of the Mar- quette High School which had an enrollment of three hundred ninety students and a faculty of twenty-six teachers. In June, 1915, I accepted a position at the Northern State Normal School, to install there the Manual Arts and Physical Training Departments. At that time the Northern State Normal had few men students. As the departments grew I had to give up one or the other so I chose to follow the Manual Arts work.

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Western Normal School 19 Our class in June 1919 forged the fifteenth link in the chain which had its beginning in 1904. It was our priv- ilege to share in many phases of West- ern ' s growth during 1917-19. Some of these phases were: first, the appropri- ation granted to the library; second, the establishment of the A. B. Degree Course and finally, third, the deepening of her sense of relation to the life of the na- tion and the strengthening of that rela- tion by opening her doors to a Student Army Training Corps Unit. At this same time our activities were varied, reaching into the fields of aca- demic study, dramatics, forensics (the Forum being established as the men ' s debating society), athletics, and numer- ous drives and war activities. Thus equipped we went out to our respective fields of active interest to try to exemplify the characteristics predom- inating the spirit of our school and the men and women who guided us. With such a backgroimd -hatever we may have accomplished in our active work is due in large measure to Western. My first year of active work was spent as mathematics teacher in an elementary school in Detroit, Mich. Since then my work has been that of critic teacher in the Detroit Teachers ' College Training School, and the latter part of last year I served as assistant-principal in an elementary school in that city. At the present I am enjoying a year at Teachers ' College where I have seen again some of the Westerners . Those of us who have been away from Normal for several years, feel a stronger appeal than ever and certainly e feel that she has a clearer right to every service we can render. FLORENCE STRATEMEYER. FLORENCE STRATEMEYER Western — Life Certificate 14 Since the Western Normal School is beautifully located, it did not matter whether we rode up in the mountain car or walked up the front stairs or up the South walk, — just so long as we did not try to ascend or descend by the wooden steps parallel to the hill-climbing car, — when we reached the school we were impressed by the beauty of the scene below us. This elevated existence may account for the fact that the faculty were so broad-minded, so tolerant, so appreciative of each individual ' s struggles and so willing to work hard to develop each personality.