Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1918 [PAGE 261]

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1917]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

257

College of Engineering to make recommendations as to the selection of a Dean of the College of Engineering and Director of the Engineering E x periment Station to succeed Dean Goss. This Committee enlarged itself, ultimately, by taking in the professors and associate professors in the College of Engineering, making twenty-three members in all. They have presented a list of eighteen men, any one of whom they considered a possible candidate so far as the interests of the Colkge of Engineering and the Engineering Experiment Station are concerned. However, the overwhelming sentiment of the Committee was that the name of Professor Charles R. Richards should be placed first on the list, and in the final recommendation this was done, and, after leaving out Professor Richards from the Committee, they voted unanimously to ask the Trustees to appoint Professor Richards as Dean of the College of Engineering and Director of the Engineering Experiment Station. I have gone over this whole case very carefully, and in fact for nearly six months, since I knew that Dean Goss was probably going away, and have studied the possibilities of securing a good successor for Dean Goss. I agree with the views of the faculty, and I recommend that the President of the University be given authority to appoint Professor Charles R. Richards Dean of the College of Engineering and Director of the Engineering Experiment Station, dating from March 1, 1917, at a salary of six thousand dollars a year. I wish it to be distinctly understood that I shall appoint Professor Richards only in case he is willing to give up the professorship which he now holds. H e is very reluctant to retire from the work of the department of mechanical engineering, and I sympathize entirely with his view. On the other hand, I do not consider that it is at all wise for him to attempt to fill the professorship, the directorship, and the deanship at the same time. The work is too onerous and too exacting.

On motion of Miss Watson, the President of the University was authorized to make this appointment. REQUEST FROM PROFESSOR J C. BLAIR .

(14) A request from Professor J. C. Blair, head of the department of horticulture, endorsed by Dean Eugene Davenport, Director of the E x periment Station, for permission to lease three plots of land for vegetable and fruit experiments: 1. An orchard of 15 acres at Louisville, Illinois, owned by V. O. Suggett, to be rented for three consecutive years with the option of two additional years if the University wishes to use this land, at a rental of $'4 an acre for the year 1917 and $5 an acre for succeeding years. 2. An orchard at Centralia, Illinois, owned by William Fouts, consisting of 16 acres, for the year 1917 on a half-crop basis. 3. A vegetable plot at Anna, Illinois, owned by E . B. Walton, consisting of two acres at $10 an acre a year. The higher rental here is .due to the fact that the property is near town.