Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - 16 Years (Edmund James) [PAGE 161]

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The Faculty

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with this increasing number of instructors, it becomes possible to secure a wider range of ability and preparation. This makes the University a more interesting place to work, and young men who are looking forward to a scientific career are more willing to come into it and remain a part of the staff for a longer time than would otherwise be the case. As our equipment is increased and as our libraries increase, the University becomes to an increasing extent a center of scientific research and investigation; and life in the University is increasingly attractive to the best type of aspiring, progressive, highly trained scientists. "Thus, if we have only one or two instructors in the department of mathematics, it is scarcely possible to have more than one or two specialties or lines of investigation represented; but when we have fifteen or twenty, it is possible not only to get men who can do well the elementary and required work in our various courses, but each one of these men can be specially trained in some particular line; so that when we take the whole body o£ instructors into consideration, all branches of mathematical investigation may be fairly represented. The importance of this possibility in the development of a truly scientific spirit and a truly scientific advance within the institution can scarcely be overestimated. In the same way, if we have only one or two instructors in the field of modern languages, we can hardly have more than one or two lines of work represented by adequately trained scholars, but when we have ten or twelve, it becomes feasible to obtain, in selecting the personnel of such a force^ representatives for every line of investigation within the great field of modern philology and literature. "No institution can lay any claim to the title, 'university,' unless it is a center of scientific activity which is spontaneous in the members of its instructing corps—self activity prompted by a divine thirst for increasing our knowledge. " I have urged upon the faculties and upon the trustees with all the earnestness of which I am capable that in the selection of young men for the position of instructor, that is, the lowest grade of our faculty positions, only those young men should be selected who have it in them to be good teachers, capable instructors and at the same time who have had the proper