Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1920 [PAGE 823]

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1920]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

819

great plan of development which your Board and its committee on this matter have in mind. I am in the fullest sympathy with all efforts to improve our campus, both in its ground plan and its architecture. The contemplation of our future needs and the possibilities of our future growth leads our minds far beyond anything that the University now has. We shall fall short in our preparation for the early development of the University if we do not dream very largely for its remoter future development. Therefore, I rejoice in the consideration of our so-called Campus Plan. Our need for laboratory and classroom space within two years may make it necessary to adopt a building program of both temporary and permanent construction. If so, I suggest that it may be well for us to consider soon the erection of buildings of such construction that by the end of ten or fifteen years they will be useless, while in the meantime we are erecting some of the more monumental, permanent buildings that are a part of the programs of all of us. On the educational side it will be necessary for us to look forward early to a large development in the Colleges of Engineering, Agriculture and, Medicine, while at the same time making adequate provision for other colleges whose need for building and equipment may not rise to so large a figure as the three that I have just mentioned. I have particularly in mind the better support of the Colleges of Commerce and Education. We shall need also to do something more for the College of Law, the School of Music, and the Library School; and of course, It goes without saying, that we must keep step with the needs of the State and the country in our department of Literature, Arts and Sciences. In short, our immediate future development calls for programs of virtual renewal of the plant and equipment of the first three colleges; provision for reasonable development of the others mentioned to meet the demands that come upon us; a better salary scale, and at the same time a permanent and semi-permanent plan of campus and building development looking as far into the future as we can wisely plan. It will be necessary for us in the fall to submit our University ; budget for the next biennium. A committee of members of the faculty appointed by myself has been at work for some months getting together the necessary data, and will soon make suggestions to me on the needs of this budget. Early in the fall, therefore, I hope to lay before you what will be, in my mind, a reasonable series of propositions to lay before the Legislature. With renewed thanks and assurances of the devotion of my best energies and thought to the great work that you have laid out for me, l am, with great respect, Very truly yours,

DAVID KINLEY

This letter was received for record.