Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1910 [PAGE 153]

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1909]

PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES.

115

Eeferred to the Committee on Buildings and Grounds with power to act. LEAVE OF ABSENCE, PROFESSOR DANIELS. 5. Request from Professor Arthur H. Daniels for leave of absence on half salary for the academic year 1909-10, for the purpose of study in Europe. This application is endorsed by Evarts B. Greene, dean of the College of Literature and Arts. Voted on motion of Mr. H a t c h t h a t leave of absence on half salary for academic year 1909-10 for the purpose of study in Europe be granted to Professor Arthur H . Daniels on the usual terms. RESIGNATION OF PROFESSOR BRECKENRIDGE. 6. Letter from Professor L. P. Breckenridge, resigning his position as Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Engineering Experiment Station, University of Illinois, to take effect Sept. 1, 1909. Dr. Edmund J. Jaw.es, President of the University of Illinois: MY DEAR SIR—I herewith tender you my resignation as Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Engineering Experiment Station of the University of Illinois, to take effect Sept. 1, 1909. Early last December I was approached by the authorities of Yale University in regard to my succeeding to the chair of Mechanical Engineering at Sheffield Scientific School in the place of Professor C. B. Richards, who, having reached the age lim.it, retires this coming June. Plans for the further development and extension of the work of the Mechanical Engineering Department were presented and discussed, and I was formally invited to take charge of the department. This invitation to return to my Alma Mater and bring to bear upon its future development the results of twenty-seven years of experience gained by contact, not only with the educational conditions and requirements of institutions in three great states, but also with the industrial and commercial needs of the engineering profession, irresistibly challenged my highest ambitions. After mature deliberation, with a keen sense of the losses involved in the severance of my connection with Illinois, I have deemed it my duty to accept the call. In tendering my resignation to the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, I am confronted by a peculiarly difficult task. In the sixteen years of service rendered to this University, there have grown up around and about me, many strong attachments, the breaking of which affects me deeply. I feel myself a part of the work with which I have been so closely identified. My relations with my own colleagues in the College of Engineering and other officials of the University have been most delightful and agreeable, and any services which I may have been able to render have been made possible by their loyal and generous cooperation and support. It means much to me to leave my own department, in the upbuilding of which I have centered my interests and ambitions. It means much to me to relinquish the work of the Engineering Experiment Station. I have put into it my best efforts from its inception until the present time when it is fairly launched on a successful career. The preliminary difficulties have been cleared away. Its continued progress is assured if the generous support it has hitherto received is continued. I shall not expect to relinquish the friendships I have made here. I shall watch with eager interest the further growth of my department and college, and of this whole magnificent University. It cannot help become greater not only in material things, but because it accomplishes great things for the education of the people who support it.