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 250]

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232 UNIVERSITY AFTER IT FOUND ITSELF C. W. Alvord taking over direction of the State Historical Collections. A few years later a special position was created with a view to the encouragement of the study of Latin-American history. Education profited by the fact that Illinois grew more and more to be a great producing center of high school teachers, and to carry on much quasi-extension work among them. The chairmanship of the department, left vacant when E. G. Dexter was appointed Commissioner of Education in Porto Rico, was filled by Prof. W. C. Bagley, while at the same time a school of education was organized to embrace all courses of pedagogical value. The department of political science, to which Prof. James Garner had come in 1904, and which Prof. John A. Fairlie joined in 1911, began midway in the first decade of the administration to make use of the opportunities in a State University for practical research and to attract a number of graduate students; later it took the first steps in extension work. In all the departments of this college the greatest impetus followed the completion of Lincoln Hall, which took them out of a veritable straitjacket. The consolidation of the two colleges was dictated by the plain consideration that they were seriously duplicating each other's work. At the same time, each was expanding the privileges of election from the curriculum of the other, and this liberal treatment of electives demanded a single administration. The faculty in literature and arts approved of the alliance long before that in science would consent to the step, but it was finally effected; and in the spring of 1913 Kendric C. Babcock, a former president of the University of Arizona, became head of the college of liberal arts and sciences. A marked increase in efficiency was soon manifest. This union of two of the most important Uni-