Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - 16 Years (Edmund James) [PAGE 160]

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Sixteen Years at tk$ University of Illinois

strength in the faculty of the University of Illinois may be seen in the fact that in 1908-05 edition of IV/io's 'Who in America thirty-four names of members of the faculty of the University were given, and that in the 1918-19 edition of this publication the number had increased to 124—a gain of 90, or 265 per cent for the past sixteen years. In the first edition of the American Men of Science, published in 1906, the names of six members of the faculty of the University of Illinois were starred as being among "the thousand students of the natural and exact sciences in the United States, whose work is supposed to be the most important. *' In the four years from 1906 to 1910 the number increased to 17, a gain of nearly 200 per cent. In commenting upon this fact the editor says:14 "As has been already indicated, Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale, in New England, and Chicago, Illinois and Wisconsin, in the north central region have been particularly fortunate in the possession of younger men who have acquired scientific reputation in the course of recent years. The same institutions have been equally happy in not having many men who have lost their positions on the thousand. This double success cannot be attributed to chance, but must indicate skill in the selection of men, or an environment favorable to good work," In this connection an extract from the report of the President of the University of Illinois to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1906 will be of interest:15 " I think it will be generally agreed that the average scholar* ship, and the experience and efficiency of the younger appointees in all the various faculties have been materially elevated. There is general agreement that we have never had an abler, better trained, or more experienced body of young instructors than are now at work in the University of Illinois. Conditions, of course, are becoming more and more favorable for bringing about such results. With the increase of the student body it becomes necessary to enlarge the instructing corps, and

"American Men of Scienco, 2nd Edition, 1910, p. 572 "HL School Report, 1904-06, pp. 390-391