Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1898 [PAGE 258]

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258

UNIVERSITY O F I L L I N O I S .

[June

7,

be hurtful to others has been permitted to escape him, His strength as a student, his great industry and the steadiness of his ways have won for him the esteem of all thoughtful persons about the University. No one doubts his scientific attainments, his mastery of his subject, or his ability to teach. He is not in strong health, however, and, possibly because of lack of opportunity, has not shown a tendency towards aggressive leadership or organizing ability. He has* proved his right not only to the good will but to some substantial approval on the part of the University. He has been thought of for head of the electrical engineering department when it should be separately constituted, and two months ago was recommended to me for that position in an official communication by the Dean of the College of Engineering. Professor Swenson is twenty-six years old; he graduated at this University in 1893 and has since been employed here, spending one summer at Cornell. He is naturally a bright young man and has Deen active and energetic. His taste has led him into mechanical rather than theoretical work. He is much more naturally adapted to commercial work than to teaching. He has not shown the qualities which fit one for leadership and would not be thought of as a safe head for any University department. Each of these young men has been growing in the direction of his tastes and endencies. Year after year they have become more and more unlike and farther apart. The time has apparently come when it is advisable to organize a separate department of electrical engineering and equip it as strongly as we can. The new organization for this department has had my best attention. First, it has been necessary to think of the advisability of continuing the assistant professors referred to. I have had no doubt about it in the case of Professor Esty; have weighed carefully the suggestion of Dean Ricker that he be given the headship of the department; but have not as yet been able to conclude that it wrould be wise to do so, for reasons which I have already suggested. I have had an extended correspondence, running to every important technical school in the country, and to every man of prominence whose name I could get. In this correspondence many names have been proposed, but out of a score of men of more or less promise none appears who is older, has had more experience, or whose preparation is more thorough, or who gives better promise than Professor Esty, and I am strongly of the opinion that a new man should not be brought in above him unless clearly he has a right to be above him by reason of stronger attainments and larger experience. I am as clearly of the opinion that the interests of the work will be promoted by the retirement of Professor Swenson. For a considerable time I have been aware that the conviction was gaining ground among the leading men in the College of Engineering that his undue familiarity with students, his antagonism to his associates and superior officers, and his loose talk have been the cause of the friction and demoralization which have annoyed us so much. I have been very late coming to this conclusion myself and probably should not have been satisfied of it as yet had not direct and positive proof been presented. About two weeks ago Professor Swenson amazed me by coming and volunteering statements concerning his superior officer, which were not only without justification but were absurd, and showed that he had lost all sense of his own youth and inexperience and had become utterly demoralized in thought and feeling to an extent which ought to preclude his continuance in the faculty. It is well to say, also, that statements made to Dean Ricker on the part of Mr. Ferdinand J. Foote, the mechanician in the department and an altogether too intimate companion of Professor Swenson, lead to the same conclusion as to him. Therefore, I make the following recommendations: 1. That after the present year the work in electrical engineering be organized as a separate and independent department of the College of Engineering. 2. That Professor Carman be made the head of the department of physics with the same title as now of professor of physics.