Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1962 [PAGE 121]

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118

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

[September 21

organizations, churches, private enterprises on the west side of Chicago, including the Garfield Park Chamber of Commerce, the East Garfield Park Improvement Association, and Home Owners Enterprises. He urged the Board to reaffirm its decision in the selection of Garfield Park as a site for the Chicago Undergraduate Division and offered the support of the organizations and individual citizens in the Garfield Park community. A copy of his presentation has been filed with the Secretary of the Board for record. At the conclusion of the hearing, Mr. Mattson and his associates presented petitions signed by approximately 18,000 citizens of Chicago in support of the selection of Garfield Park for the relocation of the Chicago Undergraduate Division, urging that the Board appeal the recent adverse court decision and offering their support should a referendum become necessary to make Garfield Park available to the University for educational purposes. These petitions were turned over to the Secretary of the Board and a copy has been filed by him as a part of the record of today's meeting.

MEMORIAL TO ARTHUR CUTTS WILLARD

Mr. Pogue offered the following: The Board o! Trustees of the University of Illinois records with deep sorrow the death on September 11, I960, of Dr. Arthur Cutts Willard, President Emeritus of the University, Dr. Willard was born in Washington, D,C, on August 12, 1878, and received his undergraduate and professional education at the National College ot Pharmacy and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With the exception of a few years of teaching at the California School of Mechanical Arts in San Francisco and at George Washington University, and service as an engineer on the staff of the War Department just before coming to the University of Illinois, his life's work was at this University. He was married to Sarah Lamhorn ot Washington, D.C., November 26, 1907, who survives. Dr. Willard came to the University of Illinois as Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering in 1913, progressing rapidly to full professorial rank in 1917. He was Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering from 1920 to 1934, and Acting Dean of the College of Engineering and Director of the Engineering Experiment Station from 1933 to 1934, when he became the University s ninth President. He retired September 1, 1946, after thirty-three years of continuous service at the University of Illinois. He had otherwise served the University on numerous important faculty committees dealing with educational and administrative problems. So when he v^ elected President of the University of Illinois, the Board of Trustees could proudly announce tiiat in the election of Professor Arthur Cutts Willard, tlie Board had chosen from the faculty a man who through twenty-one years of loyal and distinguished service to the University as a teacher, scientist, and administrator had the respect of students, alumni, colleagues on the faculty and elsewhere in his profession, and of the industries of the State and the Nation. Many lllini will rememl>er htm with gratitude as a great teacher and for I'is high professional standards which have influenced their careers. He also will bt remembered by_ countless others for his contributions as a scientist to the ensflneering profession and for his services to industry and government. Outstanding: among his achievements was the research he directed at the University of Illinois which produced the basic data for engineering the ventilating system of tN Holland Tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey, a system subsequent]}' also used elsewhere in the United States and abroad. He came into the Presidency of the University at one of the most difficult periods in its history when institutional financial resources were greatly reduce and the immediate task was one of rebuilding and restoring confidence in. tl" future. He brought the University from those years of the economic depress""1 through a period of increasing prosperity and growth, and through the trying years of World War II, into a new era.