Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1884 [PAGE 215]

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BOABD MEETING—MAECH 11, 1884.

The Board met at the University parlor at 3 P. M. Present—Trustees Earle, McLean, Follansbee, Millard and Pearman. Absent—Governor Hamilton, Trustees Landrigan, Bennett, Cobb and Paden. Letters regretting their inability to be present at this meeting were received from Messrs. Bennett and Paden. The records of last meeting were read and approved. The following officers of the Board were unanimously reelected: President of the Board, Mr. S. M. Millard. Becording Secretary, Professor E. Snyder. Corresponding Secretary, Professor T. J. Burrill. The Begent presented his quarterly report, which was read and received:

To the Trustees of the Illinois Industrial University: GENTLEMEN—A. partly formed custom may expect at this, the annual meeting of your Board, an analysis of the work done in the University in its various departments, viewed from an educational standpoint; a review of the workmen and of their labors. In the earlier and formative days, when changes were constant and everything was new, such a review had a very appropriate place. At present it seems enough to note that in most of the chairs of the University the incumbents are men of long residence, of known and acknowledged ability, of unremitting industry and of unwavering fidelity. To name a part would be invidious, to name all superfluous. I may be permitted, therefore, to pass without specific mention most of the departments as well established and bearing good results already known to you, while I may, without impropriety, speak briefly of some in which changes have occurred recently. The Chemical department has come upon a solid and substantial foundation, entirely satisfactory. The value of the work done here is especially commended by our graduates who go on in further study in schools of medicine or pharmacy, or into actual chemical practice. Important analyses have been made during the year by the professor and his assistants, particularly in a field now attracting much attention, the chemistry of the hog, and of hog-products, and the results have attracted much attention at home and abroad. Other fresh investigations will be reported by the students themselves, and embodied in their theses. The Chemical laboratory is a place for earnest work, where the careless and the indojent do not find an asylum. Decided progress has been made in the department of zoology. The methods of laboratory instruction and study, which have borne good fruit in other departments, have been introduced here. The work of dissection of all the lower animal forms has been begun and carried to a commendable degree of efficiency, under the scalpel and the microscope. With vigorous effort on the part of the instructor, and cordial support from those in authority, this neglected phase of study may be brought to the high degree of efficiency found in the kindred department of biology, the Botanical laboratory. In the Mechanical school the evidences are that we have been fortunate in securing a competent and useful instructor. Mr. Woods is doing good work in the obstruser parts of the science of mechanical engineering, and especially excellent work with the students in constructive and mechanical drawing. Under the authority given by you at the last meeting, an instructor in Elocution has been employed until the end of the present year. The experiment appears to be working satisfactorily, but must be continued into another term before it can be reported upon definitely.