It was a hot midsummer day; the windows of University Hall were opened wide on the Yard; electric fans were buzzing along the wall. Dean Wadsworth suggested that the school was there for business, and that coats should come off. Coats came off, and the scholars sat in their shirt sleeves, notebook in hand, and gave their attention. They heard the President outline without emotional appeal the organization, position and aims of the University - a picture of the whole, the detail of which was to be filled in later by the speakers of the various departments. They heard all day, in the same room, of developments in the college and in the graduate school, of what had been done to meet the demands and needs of changing times, and of the difficulty in meeting these needs because of lack of funds. They learned that the professors and instructors are working for the same remuneration to-day as thirteen years ago. Professor Charles H. Haskins, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, just returned to Cambridge after a seven months' absence in Paris as one of the leading historical experts of the American Commission, talked to them from the shoulder. Professor William B. Munro also spoke forcibly about the position of the teaching staff. They learned something of the President's progress towards the achievement of his purpose to make the University not only a teacher, not only a collector, not only a home of research, but a builder of the character of young men. The information was given in talks by the Regent, the Dean of the College, the directors of the committees on choice of courses, and the new Professor of Physical Hygiene, Dr. Roger I. Lee, '02. From the afternoon meeting the graduates adjourned to the Widener Library, inspected it, and heard from the librarian, Mr. Lane, a definite statement of its needs for maintenance. In the evening they dined at the Colonial Club, where again some of the University's most distinguished professors mingled with some of their most distinguished pupils in their shirt sleeves. The plans of campaign for the Fund were outlined and discussed. Every man signed a poster by E. A. Bacon, '20, of the Lampoon, which represented President Lowell on a pedestal with a halo about his head, surrounded by a learned, baldheaded assemblage. He held in his right hand a street car conductor tagged "60 cents an hour," and in his left a college instructor tagged "18 cents an hour"; underneath was the legend: "Which is worth more, Gentlemen: Minding the Train or Training the Mind?" On Tuesday morning the students took sight-seeing automobiles to the Medical School with its collection of auxiliary hospitals, and thence to the Dental School. The Deans of these two schools spoke of their work and needs, of their growth in a short space of years from the marshes of the Fenway, and of the work which lay before. The visitors saw an exhibit of the work of Dr. Kazanjian, the most noted dental surgeon of the war, who left the Dental School in June, 1915, with Base Hospital No. 22 of the British Expeditionary Forces, and remained with it until after the armistice. During this time he operated on the jaws and teeth of about 7000 wounded men. For many he practically replaced entire jaws that had been shot away. The visitors saw also at the Medical School the beginnings of a School of Industrial Hygiene, where for a year with such men and equipment as can be afforded the problem of industrial health has been studied and taught, the funds being furnished by a committee of manufacturers. With barely time to return from Boston, the school moved to lunch at the Colonial Club. The talks that followed were by Professor H. W. Holmes, '03, chairman of the Division of Education, on the proposed Graduate School of Education; by Professor E. F. Gay, Dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration; by Professor C. J. Bullock, head of the Economics Department; and by Professor F. W. Taussig, '79, Chairman of the Tariff Commission, and like Dean Haskins just returned from the peace conference at Paris. In the afternoon the students visited the Law School and the Department of Chemistry. In the evening Eliot Wadsworth, '98, gave his dinner at the Harvard Club of Boston, and on Wednesday morning the school closed with an inspection of the physical laboratories and an address on the new School of Engineering. What was learned from these crowded days? In the first place most of the men in attendance on the Endowment Fund Summer School learned that they had graduated from Harvard College, taken their graduate work there, continued associations with it after graduation, without the slightest comprehension of its scope and multifold activities. Most graduates of Harvard know what the College means or what their own particular department means. Very few of them realize what the word University means. Members of the Summer School learned from July 28 to 30 something of the extent of the plant, and the scope of its interests. They had learned from experience and observation in the world the need of experts. They learned in these days the branches in which the University is attempting to make experts, or to turn its own experts to the public service. |