DEAN CARL C. ENGBERG

Dean of Men

OR over a third of a century I have as a student or teacher in the University, watched its remarkable progress and growth materially, intellectually, morally. In the early days, the University was extremely poor, but under the leadership of a few great men, it was making the most of its meager resources, and was laying a firm foundation for substantial and unlimited future growth. Lack of equipment and shortage of teachers often made it almost impossible to secure good work because of the impossibility of reaching the less capable or the unwilling. Conditions are still far from ideal, but they are surely improving with every passing year. Though the growth in the past has been great, it should be far greater in the near future, and we will before long have an equipment and a teaching staff adequate to all our needs. Beautiful buildings and elaborate equipment, however, do not make a great university, but they make good work possible. Many teachers do not make up for quality of teaching, but they make it possible to give the personal instruction and inspiration to the individual which has in the past been too often denied him.

   Equipment and teachers, though, however great they may be, are powerless unless they have the cooperation of an earnest, intelligent and energetic student body. Scholarship is now honored as never before. It is coming to be recognized as a requirement without which there is no entry to athletics, to fraternities, to student activities, in short, to all the avenues of activity that loom so large and attractive before the eyes and imagination of the young men and women of today. The strong student who a few years ago was sneered at, is now coming into his own; the society drone, who once was considered so desirable, is now being rapidly eliminated; and there is being developed an atmosphere of such spiritual and moral power as to make the University the greatest single force for good in the State. Fortunate indeed are they who are privileged to have a part in this epoch-making progress.

 

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