Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1944 [PAGE 1080]

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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

IO77

affairs. As a further step in this program, the Commission recommends that the student administration setup be coordinated further and that the responsibility be centered in one administrator. This action would bring the University in line with a trend in many institutions to unify under a dean or director of student affairs the principal noninstructional activities that affect student welfare, such as those concerned with housing, social life, health, financial aid, and all-university counseling services. The University of Illinois is in accord with the very widespread practice in institutions of higher education in making proper provision for the health of its students through University hospitalization service. As a matter of fact its service was the first of the kind in the country, having been founded in 1899. This service is available on a volunteer basis to students, nonteaching staff, and faculty members. The Commission commends the University in making these facilities available, but it strongly recommends that participation therein be made compulsory for the entire body of full-time students. It is apparent to the Commission that important progress has been made at the University of Illinois since 1934 in student housing, the administration of student personnel work, the organization of student affairs, and the administration of general student welfare. The University can make still further progress in handling these matters by further coordination under a more centralized administration. T H E QUALITY OF T H E FACULTY There is nothing more important to any institution of higher education than the persons who constitute its faculty. Their qualifications as scholars, as teachers, as students determine very largely the educational heights which the institution can reach or the depths to which it may sink. Obviously the size of the teaching staff of a university is no index of the quality of the teaching carried on or of the qualifications of that staff for teaching. In order to compare the quality of the present faculty with that of 1934, it is necessary to choose some measures or indices. Further, these indices must be limited to those items upon which data are available for 1934 and for the present period. With these limiting factors in mind the Commission has chosen as indices of

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