Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/241

STUDENTS AND FACULTY 21 1 Nathaniel Butler, once a member of the faculty of the Old University of Chicago, was brought from the University of Illinois and became acting Director of University Extension. Mr. Butler joined the small group of administrative officers at 1212 Chamber of Commerce on June i, 1892. He devoted the summer to the organization of lecture courses and preparing the announcements for them. He secured promises of courses of extension lectures from as many of the coming professors as possible, and organized "centers" in many communities. A University Extension faculty was appointed, consisting, in addition to the President, Mr. Moul- ton, and Mr. Butler, of seven lecturers with Francis W. Shepardson as editorial secretary. In addition there were appointed nineteen associate lecturers, and twenty- two other members of the faculties were available for courses of lectures. When, therefore, the facul- ties came together in October the University Extension Division was as completely organized as any other. At the meeting of the Trustees held on March 19, 1892, E. Hastings Moore of Northwestern University was elected Professor of Mathematics. Mr. Moore, who later became Head of his department, was well known to the President, the two having been associated as teachers at both Yale and Chautauqua. On March 19 also, Charles O. Whitman of Clark University was elected Head Professor of Biology. A correspondence had begun between Mr. Whitman and the President nearly a year before. An exceptionally able group of scientists was gathered at Clark, and it so happened that, owing to unsatisfactory internal condi- tions, a group of fifteen most desirable men was prepared to con- sider favorable openings elsewhere. The opportunity for Chicago was an extraordinarily tempting one. Mr. Tufts relates that in an interview in New Haven about January i, 1891, Dr. Harper told me that he had at that time in mind three departments that he wished to be strong from the outset, his own department of Semitics, Classics, and Philosophy. It subsequently proved that the natural science departments were given especial strength, but that, if I remember, was not in his mind so strongly from the beginning. The opportunity of securing so large a group of men, some of them already distinguished and others of great promise, enough