Yale University - Banner / Pot Pourri Yearbook (New Haven, CT)

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... the gratifying feeling that our duty has Imn duiu I

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ADMINISTRATION

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SIXTEEN YEARS AT YALE By President James Rowland Angell IN response to the request of the editors of the Banner and Pot Pourri, I gladly at- tempt to suggest in a few words certain of the important developments at Yale during my administration. My commentary must inevitably be fragmentary, for it is literally impossible to compress within the limits necessarily set any adequate rehearsal of a period so replete with interesting occurrences. The most important thing about a University is the faculty. Next in importance are to be counted the students, whose quality will largely determine the character of the work the institution can actually accomplish. Below either of the foregoing in import- ance, though far from negligible, are the buildings and other physical facilities available. Depending for their effectiveness in part on building appointments, but of far greater intrinsic consequence, should be listed the libraries, laboratories, and collections. No matter how excellent the faculty and students, without adequate equipment in these respects work of distinction is well nigh impossible and even sound work is extremely difficult to attain. Financial resources constitute the last of the indispensable features of a university. I comment briefly on the changes at Yale in my time under these several headings and in inverse order. The productive endowments of Yale — now roughly a hundred million — have ap- proximately quadrupled since 1921 and, as more than half of the income of the Univer- sity derives from this source, the increase in the amount is most fortunate, for interest rates have fallen sharply, the University has experienced a notable growth, and for many reasons it is much more costly to maintain the highest standards than it was six- teen years ago. The largest single increment in this increase comes from the twenty million dollar endowment campaign of 1926, which resulted in pledges of over twenty- one millions from more than 22,000 Yale graduates. None of it was devoted to buildings and none will be. Mr. Harkness ' princely munificence has provided the Colleges, endowments for the needs of bursary students and for the maintenance of the Masters. The John W. Sterling Estate, intended by the benefactor to be expended primarily on buildings has, under the wise interpretation of the will by his Trustees, afforded the University a large number of generously endowed professorial chairs, as well as some millions of dollars available for scholarships and fellowships. In 1921 the amount avail- able to students in such scholarships, fellowships, loan funds and the like was 8134,789.- 66; in 1937 it is $600,219.68. It is impracticable to list the extraordinan,- additions to the libraries. Many of them have been altogether priceless. In the great Sterling Memorial, in the library of the School of Law, in the Divinity Quadrangles, in the Sc hool of Medicine and the Forestry School, not to mention the many subordinate departmental libraries, and the libraries of the Colleges, the developments have been little short of revolutionary. A similar, but less extensive, development of our laboratories has occurred, with the Sterling Chemis- try building and the Biological-Medical Laboratories as the most conspicuous instances. The architectural renaissance of Yale in the period in question has been so obvious that it has attracted disproportionate attention. Some forty new buildings have been erected, not a few of them, like the Sterling Memorial Library and the Payne Whitney Gymnasium, of monumental proportions, and almost all of them of commanding beauty. They serve the widest variety of University needs — residential halls, libraries, observatories, lecture and recitation buildings, chapels, art galleries and museums, hospitals and health clinics, physical education and sports, etc., etc. Thanks to restriction on attendance, the student body has not grown unreasonably 27