Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - 16 Years (Edmund James) [PAGE 242]

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226

Sixteen Years at the University of Illinois

organisation of a School of Education, with apecial reference to the preparation of teachers for secondary schools. A Senate committee appointed by the President of the University to study the question reported that in the judgment of the committee it was inadvisable to establish a school of education separate in administration from the existing colleges. It was recommended however that all members of the instructional staff of the University offering courses primarily intended for the preparation of high school teachers should be organized as a group, to be known as the Faculty of the School of Education, and that such persons should constitute committees from their respective colleges to represent those colleges in the faculty of the school.20 The general suggestions contained in this report were adopted as a basis for the organization of the School of Education, and the School was formally announced in the University catalog of 1905-06. During the fifteen years since the School was established a number of educators of national prominence have served in the School as members of the administrative or instructional staff. The first director, Prof. Edwin Grant Dexter, resigned in 1907 to accept the commissionership of education to Porto Rico. Dr. Edward 0. Sisson, after serving as assistant professor in the School of Education for the year 1905-6 resigned to become head of the Department of Education in the University of Washington, later becoming Commissioner of Education of the State of Idaho. In 1908 Dr. William Chandler Bagley was appointed professor of education, and a year later was made director of the School. During his administration the School of Education of the University of Illinois assumed a place among the foremost schools of its class in the country. Dr. Bagley resigned in 1917 to join the Department of Education of Columbia University. Dr. Lewis Flint Anderson came to the School in 1909 as assistant professor of education He resigned in 1914 to accept a professorship of education in the Ohio State University. While at the University of Illinois Professor Anderson had charge of the work in the history of

"Bept., Univ. of HI., 1906, pp. 40, 43, 62, 75