The College's First Deans

Since its inception the office of dean of the College of Engineering has been held by eight persons. The faculties of the four original colleges of the University were first organized in 1878. At the first meeting of the faculty of the College of Engineering, held in February 1878, Prof. Stillman W. Robinson was the dean. Dr. Nathan C. Ricker was elected dean in the fall of the same year, and he held that office for twenty-seven yearsÑuntil June 1905. He was immediately succeeded by James M. White, professor of architectural engineering, who served as acting dean until June 1907, when he resigned that office to become supervising architect of the University. His successor was William F. M. Goss, who resigned as head of the engineering schools at Purdue University to become dean of the College of Engineering at Illinois. Arriving in the fall of 1907, he continued in this office until March 1917, being, however, on leave of absence from July 1, 1913, until August 31, 1915. During Dean Goss's absence Professor Charles Russ Richard, head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, served as acting dean. He became dean of the College on March 1, 1917 (upon Dr. Goss's resignation), and continued in that position until July 1922, when he resigned to become president of Lehigh University. The office was then assumed by Milo S. Ketchum, who had graduated in the Department of Civil Engineering in 1895. After twenty-seven years of professional and educational experience he became dean of the College on September 1, 1922. Because of ill health he resigned that office on September 1,1933. Dean Ketchum was succeeded by Arthur C. Willard, then head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Professor Willard, unwilling to accept the office permanently, became acting dean in September 1933, and held that office until July 1934, when he became president of the University. The present incumbent, Melvin L. Enger, for thirty-one years a member of the faculty of the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics and for eight years its head, became dean of the College on July 1, 1934.

In dosing this brief recital of the development of the College of Engineering it seems proper to record the expansion which has taken place in it, a condition of growth common to other engineering schools. An engineering enrollment of one hundred in 1887-1888 has in fifty years become seventeen hundred and the organized research which began in 1903 has grown to an average yearly expenditure of $160,000 for the past ten years, resulting in the issue of twenty technical bulletins per year for that period. Even though these exhibits are statistical they, in a measure, indicate that engineering education and research have grown to be important elements in the social fabric of the nation.

The Engineering Experiment Station -- The Arthur Newell Talbot Laboratory
Table Of Contents