Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1944 [PAGE 957]

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954

Honorable Dwight H. Green Governor of Illinois Springfield, Illinois

DEAR GOVERNOR GREEN:

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

[June i

May 27, 1944

Your letter of May 24 addressed to President P a r k Livingston of the Board of Trustees and me urging the University to establish a College of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery on the Champaign-Urbana campus at the earliest feasible date is received. President Livingston and I will present your letter to the Board of Trustees at its next meeting which is scheduled for June 1, and you may be sure that it will receive every consideration. In the meantime I am sending copies of your letter to all members of the Board. W e appreciate your analysis of the situation confronting the livestock industry in Illinois. T h e Board of Trustees has had the proposal to establish a College of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery under discussion in connection with the future development of the University. W e have already had conferences with various representatives of livestock and agricultural interests, including members of the veterinary profession, concerning the need for and advisability of establishing a College of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery at the University. You may be interested in some background information. Proposals to establish a college or school of veterinary medicine at the University have been under consideration from time to time for many years. T h e Forty-Fifth General Assembly in 1907 made an appropriation of $30,000 for maintenance of a veterinary college or research laboratory in the City of Chicago on condition that a suitable site, buildings, and equipment were furnished free of charge. There was a proposal at that time to establish a veterinary college at the Union Stock Yards. Meat packers and other private interests had offered to provide a site and contribute funds for the erection and equipment of buildings but this did not materialize. T h e University's budget for the following biennium (1909-11) as presented at the Forty-Sixth General Assembly included a provision for the operation of a veterinary college, but the appropriation bill as passed did not include this item so that the project was not consummated. You have referred to the act of the Fifty-First General Assembly authorizing the Board of Trustees to establish a College of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery and directing the Trustees to prepare and submit to the next General Assembly a plan for such a college based on study of similar colleges elsewhere in consultation with livestock and veterinary interests together with budget estimates. Pursuant to this legislation the Board of Trustees appointed a commission (on which were representatives of the University, livestock and meat packing interests, and state officials) to make such a study. T h e commission submitted its reoort to the Board of Trustees in February, 1921. It discussed four possible plans: (1) a teaching school of veterinary medicine and surgery; (2) a graduate department or school of veterinary medicine and surgery; (3) a department of animal pathology; and (4) an institute of pathology. The commission definitely recommended against (1) and (2) but recommended the adoption of either Plan (3) or (4) as the proposal of the Board of Trustees to the General Assembly. T h e report of the commission was adopted by the Board of Trustees as its recommendation to the General Assembly. The Board expressed preference for Plan 4. The report with this expression of preference was made to the Governor of Illinois on March 3, 1921, and was presented by him on March 22 to the General Assembly. It was referred to the Committee on Agriculture in the Senate but nothing apparently came of it. In November, 1937, the Board of Trustees received from the Executive Board of the Illinois State Veterinary Medical Association a request that there be established a veterinary college in connection with the College of Medicine in Chicago. A special committee representative of the sciences in veterinary medicine was appointed to make a thorough study of this proposal, including a survey of existing facilities for training in this profession, and its report was presented to the Board of Trustees on September 27, 1940. T h e committee made