Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1886 [PAGE 92]

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*nent. Much pains have been taken to provide these offices with a suite of convenient, well-arranged, and spacious rooms, and the original outfit is now nearly completed, it is believed to the great satisfaction of those in charge of the work. Other movements are now in progress, which it would be premature to discuss here, but which if successfully accomplished will add much more to the value and importance of this department of the University, and must add also to the larger recognition which it will deserve at the hands of the public. Already special students are seeking to avail themselves of the improved opportunities to forward biological studies, such as can be found nowhere else in our State. The work in Geology and Physiology has been performed by Assistant Professor Charles W. Rolfe, whose success in carrying part of the veterinary work has already been mentioned. Professor Rolfe is an earnest student of natural science, and I can cheerfully attest his success as a growing and efficient teacher. Several-minor additions have been made during the past season to the geological collection, including the borings made by a diamond prospecting drill in the city of Urbana, being a complete section of the geological strata for a depth of about 580 feet. These are to be properly mounted and placed in the Museum. A collection of fossils, prepared with superior skill, and containing about four thousand specimens, has been purchased in Cleveland and is now daily expected at the University. This collection contains very few Illinois fossils, which we hope to obtain from another source. A report of the work of Professor Forbes is presented in Paper F. A report of the School of Chemistry is given by Professor Wm. McMurtrie in Paper G-.

THE COLLEGE OF LITEEATUBE AND SCIENCE.

The right of this University to exist under the original endowment act of Congress of 1862 as a school of technical and practical science has been abundantly demonstrated in the foregoing statements and reports concerning the three colleges described. The reports have touched only the leading and prominent features, the particular technical subjects which give specific character to the several schools. But the proper scope and balance of an education which should be formative as well as technical, which should build schools as well as scientists, and develop character as well as mechanical skill, has made it necessary to provide another series of instructors, who should care for a different series of subjects. In every school the English, French and German languages, history, the elements of industrial art and the more philosophic subjects, psychology, logic and political economy, demand and have received suitable attention. No man can pretend to fair scholarship in agriculture, in engineering, or in the sciences of nature, who has not some acquaintance with the other topics named, both tor personal culture and practical use. This provision has been necessary to carry into effect that injunction of the organic law not to neglect "other scientific and classical studies." This provision, necessary for the technical schools, has made it possible, and a most natural corollary, to arrange a course specially leading to the work of teachers inthe public schools of the State, which we have called the course in English and modern languages, and, with a small addition to the force of instruction, to furnish for such as wish a course in ancient languages equal in extent to that furnished in the leading classical colleges. It is, however, truo that in the years that have passed most of attention and effect has been given to the development of the technical side of the University, and the literary schools have in a measure languished. This condition of things, so far as these literary schools are concerned, ought not to continue. The University cannot exist in its proper sense without them.. They are essential to its complete and well balanced character. There should be no department of the institution which does not receive enough fostering care to make it the best of its kind. The literary schools should not be allowed to take the lead, and under present conditions there is little danger of their doing so; but by an equal rule of propriety they should not be permitted to lag behind the other schools of the University. That there is at present a tendency towards weakness in these schools is too apparent, and immediate steps should be taken to obviate this tendency. This comes most notably from the present conditions of admission, which permit students to enter who have not the kind of preparation which will best enable them to take up the special work of these schools. I earnestly recommend that, after proper notice to the public, no students be matriculated to the college of Literature and Science who shall not have the ability to pass a fair examination in the rudiments of the Latin language, as evinced by the ability to read at least reasonable selections from Caesar, Cicero and Virgil, or their equivalents. It ought no longer to be said in our catalogue that students are permitted to "m ike up" these subjects after matriculation. Suitable remissions of other subjectSj not mathematical, should be made, so that the amount of preparation required for admission to literary or to technical schools should be as nearly equal as possible; but it is not practicable to build the two courses upon precisely the same bases. I am aware that many of the so-called high schools in the State, including some,which are on our own accredited list, are but poorly prepared to give the bast training in the respect desired; but the best aid we can give them toward doing the work they ought to do, and can do if they will, is to decline longer to accept their insufficient work, and to demand, with moderation and firmness, that they shall do the work that belongs to them. I therefore advise that the forthcoming catalogue shall distinctly require that candidates for matriculation in the College of Literature and Science shall have passed satisfactory examinations in ithe Latin named, and that the clause permitting these subjects to be afterwards made up be withdrawn—both these changes to take effect in September, 1887, after one year's notice. Professor S. W. Shattuck's instruction in mathematics enters into the courses of all colleges, technical and literary. His report is as follows: (Paper H.) Professor Edward Snyder's work in French and German, enters also into long courses. (Paper I.) He is assisted by Miss Helen Gregory, in French.