Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - New Chemistry Building [PAGE 13]

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In other words, you should let the world know something about what you are doing through the publication of the results of your investigations and by a conscious and direct effort to educate the public as a whole upon what the chemical laboratory and chemical investigation and chemical teaching have in them for the common welfare. I should call this work extension work in the large sense, and I think every member of this staff ought to be interested in it. I don't mean that every member of the staff should go out and give courses in chemistry in high schools, or go out and lecture to the general public upon the value of chemistry, though some men on the staff certainly ought to be able to do this in an acceptable way; and the history of how some of the greatest chemists of the world have come to be through the inspiration of these general extension lecture courses, that is, courses given by eminent chemists to people who oould not be expected to understand their lectures unless they were couched in non-technical and plain terms, demonstrates the importance of the work. I feel, my friends, that we iio not realize Jiow ignorant the common man is as to what is going on in these great universities. He is very apt to look upon them with indifference, or regard them as mysterious centers of thought and work which he doesn't understand, and which have little connection with him or his interests. The question has often been raised in meetings of professors and administrators in our state universities, as to the function of research and investigation in a state university. I should say that function was exactly the same as in any private university, and it is far more insistent and far more necessary for the welfare of the institution than even in the case of the private universities. I have always maintained that in the long run the community will support the state universities in a large and liberal way much more because of what they are doing for the advance of science, than what they are doing in the work of teaching. My friends and colleagues of the chemical staff of the University of Illinois:—We are expecting from you the adequate performance of this threefold function of effective and inspiring teaching, valuable investigation, and diffusion of the results of this work, first among scientific men through your scientific periodicals, and then among the great mass of the community