UIHistories Project: A History of the University of Illinois by Kalev Leetaru
N A V I G A T I O N D I G I T A L L I B R A R Y
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Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Nevins) [PAGE 165]

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150

AT THE TURNING POINT

basis, that plans be made for giving the girls better physical facilities, and that there be more oversight of their general life; while shortly after they also petitioned that a representative woman be made professor, and suggested that a cottage to accommodate not over fifty be added to the buildings requested of the Legislature. Thus assailed, the faculty manifested a greater concern in the matter. One demand was partially met when Miss Katharine Merrill was made assistant professor of English. A beginning was made in answering another when Miss Merrill presented the Trustees, early in 1893, with the syllabus of a four years' domestic science course, founded on the basis of similar courses in the East and at the University of Chicago. Most of the subjects were already included in the University curriculum; the chief innovations consisted in scientific work in nutrition, which would have required special laboratories and teachers. For the physical and social comfort of the women Burrill had a practical regard, but little could be done. He closed his term with an urgent request for a woman's gymnasium. He did not think it feasible to provide a residence hall while other wants were pressing, but he recommended to the Twin Cities that it would be a good business venture for some company to undertake a dining hall and group of cottages. He believed that there were too few women—that they ought to aggregate onethird the whole student body, as at Michigan. But he and others felt the obvious disadvantages under which they labored, and those likewise which were not so obvious, as expressed in Miss Merrill's statement that "so long as conditions of living are so hard, here, especially for the young women, and so long as there is no social atmosphere in which the students, as students, belong