Worcester State University - Oak Leaf Yearbook (Worcester, MA)

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WILLIAM B. ASPINWALL 6 Kensington Road, City A B. (Harvard); Pd.M. (New York Stale College for Teachers) Docteur de ]’Universite (Paris, France). t i o n

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In deep appreciation of his sympathetic guidance , his inspiring example, and his personal interest in developing our minds and personalities, and in recognition of his long, faithful, and constructive service in the field of education, We, the Class of 1940, dedicate our Yearbook to DR. WILLIAM BILLINGS ASPINWALL President Emeritus of W orcester State Teachers College D e d i c a

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WILLIAM BILLINGS ASPINWALL, after graduating from Harvard College in 1896 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, was connected with a publishing house for one year, taught in Kentucky in 1897, and then became the assistant principal of Union Female College, Eufaula, Alabama. Early impressed with the value of specific training in pedagogy for one who pro- posed to make teaching his life work, he obtained both his Bachelor of Pedagogy and Master of Pedagogy degrees from New York State Normal College, his Master of Arts and his Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Illinois Wesleyan University, and in 1904 his Docteur de l’Universite from the University of Paris. In 1912, while he was Dean and Professor of Education at Albany State College for Teachers, he accepted the invitation of the Massachusetts State Department of Education to become the third principal of the State Normal School at Worcester. Dr. Aspinwall was largely instrumental in bringing about the conversion of the Normal School into the State Teachers College, an evolution which was ratified by the Massachusetts State Legislature in 1932. The transformation was happily not confined to the mere substituting of one name for another; rather, the change that President Aspinwall’s wise policies inaugurated involved a substantial enrichment of the curriculum, the elimination of all two- and three-year courses for teachers, the inauguration of a basal four-year course for all students, and the development and maintenance of strictly collegiate standards in the best sense of the term. Dr. Aspinwall has contributed many valuable services in the field of education. Here at the College he organized and carried on for twenty years the Annual Con- ference on Rural Education. He is now the Vice-President of the Board of Trustees of Leicester Academy. He is Past-President of the Massachusetts State Teachers College Association and of the New England Teacher Preparation Association. He is a member of the Worcester County, the Massachusetts, and the New England Superintendents’ Associations, and also of the National Education Association. Dr. Aspinwall is the author of Outlines of the History of Education and has con- tributed to various educational and professional periodicals, including Education, Educational Review, School and Society, The Classical Journal, and the Modern Language Journal. Lawrence A. Averill