Download or read book The Making of a History written by Gregory M. Tobin and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-09-10 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Walter Prescott Webb became one of the best known interpreters of the American West following the publication of The Great Plains in 1931. That book remained one of the outstanding studies of the region for decades and attracted considerable attention over the years for its unusual emphasis on the impact of geographic factors on the process of settlement. Using manuscript sources, some of which had not previously been available, Gregory M. Tobin has traced the elements that went into the planning and writing of The Great Plains and that account for its distinctive approach to the writing of a regional history. Tobin emphasizes two aspects of Webb's life that molded the historian's outlook: his early family life and community connections in West Texas and his admiration for the ideas of scholar Lindley Miller Keasbey. Webb reacted strongly against the assumption that the only cultural values of any real worth emanated from the urban and sophisticated East; he was determined to write the history of his own people in a way that would reveal the scale of their anonymous contribution to American civilization. By reverting to Keasbey's stress on the relationship between natural environment and social institutions, Webb broadened his study to take in what he believed to be a distinct geographic environment. The result was The Great Plains, an assertion of individual and regional identity by a man with a personal stake in establishing the image of a distinctive Plains civilization. Although The Making of a History is not a full biography of Walter Prescott Webb, it is the first biographically oriented study of a man regarded as one of the twentieth century's major western historians. It places his development within the framework of his intellectual and social setting and, in a sense, subjects his career to the same type of scrutiny that he advocated as the basis of the study of evolving cultures.

Download or read book Edmund J James and the Making of the Modern University of Illinois 1904 1920 written by Winton U Solberg and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2024-11-12 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1904, Edmund J. James inherited the leadership of an educational institution in search of an identity. His sixteen-year tenure transformed the University of Illinois from an industrial college to a major state university that fulfilled his vision of a center for scientific investigation. Winton U. Solberg and J. David Hoeveler provide an account of a pivotal time in the university’s evolution. A gifted intellectual and dedicated academic reformer, James began his tenure facing budget battles and antagonists on the Board of Trustees. But as time passed, he successfully campaigned to address the problems faced by women students, expand graduate programs, solidify finances, create a university press, reshape the library and faculty, and unify the colleges of liberal arts and sciences. Combining narrative force with exhaustive research, the authors illuminate the political milieu and personalities around James to draw a vivid portrait of his life and times. The authoritative conclusion to a four-part history, Edmund J. James and the Making of the Modern University of Illinois, 1904–1920 tells the story of one man’s mission to create a university worthy of the state of Illinois.

Download or read book To Advance Knowledge written by Roger L. Geiger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-29 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American research universities are part of the foundation for the supremacy of American science. Although they emerged as universities in the late nineteenth century, the incorporation of research as a distinct part of their mission largely occurred after 1900. To Advance Knowledge relates how these institutions, by 1940, advanced from provincial outposts in the world of knowledge to leaders in critical areas of science. This study is the first to systematically examine the preconditions for the development of a university research role. These include the formation of academic disciplines--communities that sponsored associations and journals, which defined and advanced fields of knowledge. Only a few universities were able to engage in these activities. Indeed, universities before World War I struggled to find the means to support their own research through endowments, research funds, and faculty time. To Advance Knowledge shows how these institutions developed the size and wealth to harbor a learned faculty. The book illustrates how arrangements for research changed markedly in the 1920s when the great foundations established from the Rockefeller and Carnegie fortunes embraced the advancement of knowledge as a goal. Universities emerged in this decade as the best-suited vessels to carry this mission. Foundation resources made possible the development of an American social science. In the natural sciences, this patronage allowed the United States to gain parity with Europe on scientific frontiers, of which the most important was undoubtedly nuclear physics. The research role of universities cannot be isolated from the institutions themselves. To Advance Knowledge focuses on sixteen universities that were significantly engaged with research during this era. It analyzes all facets of these institutions--collegiate life, sources of funding, treatment of faculty--since all were relevant to shaping the research role.

Download or read book Creating the Big Ten written by Winton U Solberg and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2018-03-21 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Big Ten football fans pack gridiron cathedrals that hold up to 100,000 spectators. The conference's fourteen member schools share a broadcast network and a 2016 media deal worth $2.64 billion. This cultural and financial colossus grew out of a modest 1895 meeting that focused on football's brutality and encroaching professionalism in the game. Winton U. Solberg explores the relationship between higher education and collegiate football in the Big Ten's first fifty years. This formative era saw debates over eligibility and amateurism roil the sport. In particular, faculty concerned with academics clashed with coaches, university presidents, and others who played to win. Solberg follows the conference's successful early efforts to put the best interests of institutions and athletes first. Yet, as he shows, commercial concerns undid such work after World War I as sports increasingly eclipsed academics. By the 1940s, the Big Ten's impact on American sports was undeniable. It had shaped the development of intercollegiate athletics and college football nationwide while serving as a model for other athletic conferences.

Download or read book Wisdom s Workshop written by James Axtell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-07 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential history of the modern research university When universities began in the Middle Ages, Pope Gregory IX described them as "wisdom's special workshop." He could not have foreseen how far these institutions would travel and develop. Tracing the eight-hundred-year evolution of the elite research university from its roots in medieval Europe to its remarkable incarnation today, Wisdom's Workshop places this durable institution in sweeping historical perspective. In particular, James Axtell focuses on the ways that the best American universities took on Continental influences, developing into the finest expressions of the modern university and enviable models for kindred institutions worldwide. Despite hand-wringing reports to the contrary, the venerable university continues to renew itself, becoming ever more indispensable to society in the United States and beyond. Born in Europe, the university did not mature in America until the late nineteenth century. Once its heirs proliferated from coast to coast, their national role expanded greatly during World War II and the Cold War. Axtell links the legacies of European universities and Tudor-Stuart Oxbridge to nine colonial and hundreds of pre–Civil War colleges, and delves into how U.S. universities were shaped by Americans who studied in German universities and adapted their discoveries to domestic conditions and goals. The graduate school, the PhD, and the research imperative became and remain the hallmarks of the American university system and higher education institutions around the globe. A rich exploration of the historical lineage of today's research universities, Wisdom's Workshop explains the reasons for their ascendancy in America and their continued international preeminence.

Download or read book Colleges and Universities in World War II written by V. R. Cardozier and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1993-03-30 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: V. R. Cardozier provides a comprehensive and engaging look at the role played by colleges and universities in World War II, the contributions they made to the war effort, and the impact of the war on higher education institutions. He captures the wartime mood and spirit of the American people, something that is not easy to convey to younger readers who did not directly experience these times. During the war, American colleges and universities were dedicated to serving the needs of the military and all agencies of the government through training, research, and service. The Army, Navy, and Army Air Forces College Training Programs are discussed in separate chapters. Cardozier examines many adjustments colleges made: accelerating their calendars, adapting to losses in enrollment, and changing the curriculum. Military training programs on campuses and how they differed from college training programs are described, as well as the impact of the war on faculty: depletion of the teaching ranks, wartime research on campus, and faculty in the military and government service, especially in OSRD and OSS. The final chapter examines the overall impact of the war on higher education, such as financial problems due to loss of enrollment, issues of academic freedom, academic credit for military service, the GI Bill, and changes in curricula, teaching tools, and campus cultures.

Download or read book The California Idea and American Higher Education written by John Aubrey Douglass and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-03 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the twentieth century, public universities were established across the United States at a dizzying pace, transforming the scope and purpose of American higher education. Leading the way was California, with its internationally renowned network of public colleges and universities. This book is the first comprehensive history of California's pioneering efforts to create an expansive and high-quality system of public higher education. The author traces the social, political, and economic forces that established and funded an innovative, uniquely tiered, and geographically dispersed network of public campuses in California. This influential model for higher education, "The California Idea," created an organizational structure that combined the promise of broad access to public higher education with a desire to develop institutions of high academic quality. Following the story from early statehood through to the politics and economic forces that eventually resulted in the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education, The California Idea and American Higher Education offers a carefully crafted history of public higher education.

Download or read book The University of Illinois 1894 1904 written by Winton U. Solberg and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The distinguished historian Winton U. Solberg presents a detailed case study of one institution's transformation into a modern American university. The years 1894 to 1904 mark the stormy tenure of Andrew S. Draper as president of the University of Illinois. Draper, a successful superintendent of schools with no college or university experience and no credentials as a post-secondary administrator, presided over many crucial improvements in the university's physical plant, curricula, and other areas. However, he failed to infuse the university with a spirit of cohesion, and his term as president was fraught with conflict. From his inauguration on, the autocratic Draper collided with deans and faculty who opposed both the substance of his changes and the manner in which he presented and implemented them. This volume closely examines the Draper years from the perspectives of faculty, students, and administrators. Solberg outlines the administrative, faculty, staff, and physical infrastructure. He also reveals a vibrant and varied student life, including a whirl of social activities, literary societies, intercollegiate debate and athletics, hazing, religion, and increasingly prominent fraternities. A sharply delineated and detailed picture of a university in transition, The University of Illinois, 1894-1904 traces the school's shift from an institution known primarily as a training ground for engineers to a full-fledged university poised to compete on the national level.

Download or read book The Rise of Gridiron University written by Brian M. Ingrassia and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2015-12-04 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The quarterback sends his wide receiver deep. The crowd gasps as he launches the ball. And when he hits his man, the team's fans roar with approval-especially those with the deep pockets. Make no mistake; college football is big business, played with one eye on the score, the other on the bottom line. But was this always the case? Brian M. Ingrassia here offers the most incisive account to date of the origins of college football, tracing the sport's evolution from a gentlemen's pastime to a multi-million dollar enterprise that made athletics a permanent fixture on our nation's campuses and cemented college football's place in American culture. He takes readers back to the late 1800s to tell how schools embraced the sport as a way to get the public interested in higher learning-and then how football's immediate popularity overwhelmed campuses and helped create the beast we know today. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Ingrassia proves that the academy did not initially resist the inclusion of athletics; rather, progressive reformers and professors embraced football as a way to make the ivory tower less elitist. With its emphasis on disciplined teamwork and spectatorship, football was seen as a "middlebrow" way to make the university more accessible to the general public. What it really did was make athletics a permanent fixture on campus with its own set of professional experts, bureaucracies, and ostentatious cathedrals. Ingrassia examines the early football programs at universities like Michigan, Stanford, Ohio State, and others, then puts those histories in the context of Progressive Era culture, including insights from coaches like Georgia Tech's John Heisman and Notre Dame's Knute Rockne. He describes how reforms emerged out of incidents such as Teddy Roosevelt's son being injured on the field and a section of grandstands collapsing at the University of Chicago. He also touches on some of the problems facing current day college football and shows us that we haven't come far from those initial arguments more than a century ago. The Rise of Gridiron University shows us where and how it all began, highlighting college football's essential role in shaping the modern university-and by extension American intellectual culture. It should have wide appeal among students of American studies and sports history, as well as fans of college football curious to learn how their game became a cultural force in a matter of a few decades.

Download or read book Thomas R R Cobb 1823 1862 written by William B. McCash and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Creation of His Own written by Patricia S. Whitesell and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brings to life the fascinating story of this physical legacy of the University of Michigan's first president, Henry Philip Tappan

Download or read book Privilege and Diversity in the Academy written by Frances A. Maher and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past several decades, higher education has been transformed by the entry of faculty of color and women into the university system. Through detailed institutional ethnographies of three very different universities, Privilege and Diversity in the Academy explores how this diversification has dismantled and reconfigured relationships of privilege and diversity in higher education. Authors Maher and Tetreault use examples from a top-ranked private university, a comprehensive urban university, and a major public university to illustrate how privilege is enacted, resisted, and transformed as changes occur in the student bodies and faculties of these schools. In their analyses, they identify the institutional structures that facilitate the success of a diverse faculty and make valuable observations about patterns of institutional change and resistance.

Download or read book Markets Minds and Money written by Miguel Urquiola and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A colorful history of US research universities, and a market-based theory of their global success. American education has its share of problems, but it excels in at least one area: university-based research. That’s why American universities have produced more Nobel Prize winners than those of the next twenty-nine countries combined. Economist Miguel Urquiola argues that the principal source of this triumph is a free-market approach to higher education. Until the late nineteenth century, research at American universities was largely an afterthought, suffering for the same reason that it now prospers: the free market permits institutional self-rule. Most universities exploited that flexibility to provide what well-heeled families and church benefactors wanted. They taught denominationally appropriate materials and produced the next generation of regional elites, no matter the students’—or their instructors’—competence. These schools were nothing like the German universities that led the world in research and advanced training. The American system only began to shift when certain universities, free to change their business model, realized there was demand in the industrial economy for students who were taught by experts and sorted by talent rather than breeding. Cornell and Johns Hopkins led the way, followed by Harvard, Columbia, and a few dozen others that remain centers of research. By the 1920s the United States was well on its way to producing the best university research. Free markets are not the solution for all educational problems. Urquiola explains why they are less successful at the primary and secondary level, areas in which the United States often lags. But the entrepreneurial spirit has certainly been the key to American leadership in the research sector that is so crucial to economic success.

Download or read book Wicked Washtenaw County written by James Thomas Mann and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2010-07-16 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Washtenaw County has a dark and sordid history, filled with unexplained murders and vicious crimes. Venture into the dead of night with medical students from the University of Michigan as they snatch bodies from fresh graves. Discover how Irene Walling Smith, born and raised in Ypsilanti, became known as the "Bandit Queen" of the despicable Kozak Gang. Head back to Ann Arbor in 1878, when Howard Williams was found dead in his home with an empty bottle of morphine by his sidewas it murder, suicide or overdose? Revisit the puzzling details of the unsolved 1913 murder of seventy-three-year-old Elizabeth Stapish, something of an eccentric in Chelsea, who was strangled and buried under a pile of cornhusks in her barn. Join local history author and columnist James Mann as he reveals the enigmatic history of this Michigan county.

Download or read book Conceptions of the Role of Military Training as an Aspect of Higher Education in the United States written by Kenneth William Edwards and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Life and Legacy of Fred Newton Scott written by Donald C. Stewart and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2010-11-23 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the end of the nineteenth century, rhetoric had not yet been established as a legitimate discipline. Fred Newton Scott (1860-1931) spent his life broadening the scope of rhetoric studies through his imaginative, interdisciplinary research. Scott was both a pragmatic reformer and a visionary scholar who used empirical methods and cognitive psychology to expand this field. In this study, Donald Stewart and his wife Patricia examine Scott's essays, speeches, and books to write the first comprehensive biography of the man who became one of the most influential figures in language studies during the early twentieth century.

Download or read book A Quaker Colonel His Fianc e and Their Connections written by Richard Upsher Smith and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains letters from the Civil War of a Union officer, his fiancée, and some of their connections. The letters witness to their conviction that the pain of their four-year separation and other deprivations would help purify the country from the sin of slavery.