conferring credentials

10 May 1972 At the 12 May 1972 board meeting, President Pettit reported on the results of the year's RECRUITMENT effort. He saw satisfactory numbers of applications and paid deposits of accepted students. However, the numbers showed a downward tilt compared to the previous year at the same time: there were 1,223 applications by that spring compared to 1,377 in 1971; there were 320 paid deposits compared to 340 in 1971. The percentage of students transferring out adversely affected total enrollment. The "retention rate"--that is, the percentage of non-graduating students remaining after the preceding year--was not systematically tracked but was probably in the range from 55% to 60%. This put continuing pressure on the admissions office to produce a robust number of new students.

A year later, at the 11 May 1973 meeting, Pettit gave no numbers but said the outlook appeared satisfactory. The market strength of the college showed in an inordinately high percentage of students wishing to major in biology. (This strength created systemic imbalances in the academic operation with which the faculty continually wrestled.) Pettit caught the temper of the time in recruiting: "...trends can change fast. Cancellations can develop in droves, but so can new applications.... Our Admissions Staff is working harder, more imaginatively and more productively than ever. Competition among colleges grows keener both for candidates with and without cash as well as with and without high levels of ability. We aim to keep our places filled and with students of ability who will cause us to have pride in them while they are here and later when they become alumni."

12 May 1972 CHARLES L. LEVESQUE, director of the EVENING SCHOOL, reported to the board that enrollment stood at about 725, with a record of ups and downs from semester to semester.

21 July 1972 The American Council on Education (ACE) reported that a downward ENROLLMENT trend for the fall would leave vacancies at colleges across the nation.

As of 15 May 1972, according to the National Association of College Admissions Counselors, there were still openings at more than 2,500 institutions for 500,000 freshmen and 200,000 transfer students. But only 25 percent of colleges expected to be seeking students by the time classes began in September.

The personal comments of admissions officers around the country, reported by ACE, dramatized the beginning of the end of booming enrollments. They "ranged from 'We shall survive' to 'God help us all.'" Admissions staffers in private colleges worried about the rising trend of students enrolling at public colleges rather than private colleges. They worried also about the rise of enrollments at two-year institutions. They also cited the distressed economy and financial problems. To show the cross currents at play, ACE reported that many small, private, liberal arts colleges were "surprised and pleased" to find applications up rather than down.

The report of enrollment numbers at Ursinus by President Pettit on 10 May 1972 reflected the growing uncertainty of recruiting outcomes and the growth in the availability of spaces for new students.

15 September 1972 ENROLLMENT for the 1972-73 academic year held steady but showed signs of student uncertainty. The entering class of freshmen numbered 308, the same as that of the year before. However, the sophomore and junior classes were smaller owing to dropouts. The administration attributed these numerical trends to "the generally troubled atmosphere in American education a few years ago and the uncertainty about goals and careers that troubles many young people of college age." There were some modest adjustments and additions in recruiting methods each year. Still, the college depended on schools in the suburban counties around Philadelphia and in southern New Jersey to deliver most new students.

The annual report to the board noted hopefully that students seemed better disposed than they were before to place academic work first in their priorities--"assigning a lower but suitable priority to activities and concerns which a few years ago occupied so much time and effort and nervous energy." The bloom was coming off the boom of the sixties, it seemed. Nevertheless, student attitudes toward the college and the changing society remained troubling to the administration and faculty.

25 April 1973 EVENING SCHOOL enrollments were "somewhat of a disappointment" to Evening School Director Charles L. Levesque in his report on the spring term. Enrollment of bona fide part-time evening students (as opposed to full-time students permitted to take courses in the Evening School) fell to 638. The fall 1972 number was 678, and the spring 1972 number was 651. Evening enrollments were more or less at this level through the Pettit years. The net revenues from Evening School at this level gave significant help to a budget always thirsty for more income.

Levesque worked hard at his part-time task of running the Evening School. He brought his long years as a chemical research manager at Rohm & Haas Company to bear upon a small operation that he found interesting as a second career. It was not until he recommended to the succeeding administration a full-fledged assault on the part-time market that sharp increases in enrollments occurred.

In these and later years, the college continually sought to harmonize its part-time continuing education program with the four-year residential liberal arts program for traditional-age, full-time students. The tune was never perfect. Nevertheless, Levesque had the fervor of a convert to "androgogy" or life-long adult education. The administration and board found that the additional net revenues significantly helped the budget. Part-time Evening School students from the area, grateful for the convenience and quality of the program, spoke approvingly about the college. This was a gain for town-gown relations and the college's public relations program.

20 September 1973 RECRUITMENT of new students for the 1973-74 year was a success, but upper-class attrition cut the total enrollment. President Pettit reported that there were 326 freshmen, 90% from the top two-fifths of their high school classes. While the average verbal score dropped slightly, math scores increased and averaged over 600. This reflected the continued attractiveness of Ursinus as a place for pre-medical preparation and concentration in the natural sciences. Pettit declared that the proportion of students in the sciences had grown so much that the college could accept no more without expanding staff and facilities, something he did not wish to do. The college would make an extraordinary effort, he said, to recruit more students not interested in science in order to maintain a balance in the student body.

The persistence of the imbalance between science and non-science majors ran as a theme through the conversation of the college throughout the decade and beyond. It set up a kind of "two cultures" syndrome among faculty and students. The science faculty enjoyed knowing they were the magnet that brought the college its critical mass of students. They chafed, however, at the disparity in teaching loads when they compared theirs with those of colleagues in the social sciences and humanities. The non-science faculty sometimes bemoaned the tone of intellectual life set for the whole campus by the quantitatively oriented science curriculum. They pressed the Admissions Office for more and better-qualified non-science majors. At the same time, they derived self-justification from their battle to elevate the arts on campus, to encourage serious intellectual "play," and to pursue the "unfinished conversation" about the significance of liberal learning. Knowingly or not, they helped create a dialectic that gave students of all persuasions some breadth of understanding of liberal learning.

5 December 1973 The dean of ADMISSIONS, Geoffrey Dolman, reporting on results to date, outlined problems faced in assembling a new class to start in the fall of 1974. He named the following problems: effects of the energy crisis on commuting students, expectation of a business recession, and the competition among colleges for students. Total applications at 546 ran 61 fewer than at the same time the year before. Seventy percent of applicants wanted to major in the natural sciences, demonstrating the place of Ursinus's strength in the market. Dolman sought help from the faculty in converting applicants to enrollees through a note-writing campaign. President Pettit supplemented this appeal with a call to improve the record of retention of enrolled students without lowering standards. At the next meeting of faculty, 1 January 1974, Dolman said that the verbal SAT scores of Ursinus students on average were declining in line with the national trend. At the special meeting on standing on 31 January 1974, Pettit expressed concern over the length of the list of withdrawals and leaves of absence. He spoke of appointing an ad hoc committee to consider ways of salvaging students before they quit. (Faculty minutes)

20 July 1974 The ADMISSIONS OFFICE augmented its staff of recruiters with the hiring of what might have been the first professional female member of the Admissions staff, MARY LOU GRUBER.

It was becoming increasingly hard to recruit the best students from the college's geographically limited area of organized recruitment. The hiring of Gruber brought a youthful and sophisticated addition to the traditional recruiting office environment. At the board meeting on 15 March 1974, the administration obtained approval to admit high school juniors and seniors and 62-year-olds at one-half the normal charge for courses taken part-time. This appeared to be another response to the need to increase the number of students on campus. President Pettit began to urge faculty to take a more active part in the recruitment and retention of students, a theme that persisted into the final stage of his tenure. He then repeated his wish to form an ad hoc faculty committee on recruiting to focus faculty help. This was a departure from the position of the Admissions Office in the demand-rich sixties. Then, admissions officers had to resist the special pleading for candidates that came from all quarters, including faculty members.

20 September 1974 RECRUITMENT for the 1974-75 year produced the largest entering group of new students in the history of the college, more than 400. The attrition of upper-class students, however, continued to erode the total student count. Beginning total enrollment was down by 2.24 percent compared with the year before. President Pettit attributed the attrition to the economic distress of the times and to the persistence of an "unsettled" mood among college-age Americans.

Pettit constantly encouraged the faculty to help with recruitment. Department heads wrote personal notes of congratulations to newly accepted students, a gesture that would have seemed odd just a few years before, when baby boomers were still outnumbering the slots open at good liberal arts colleges. This year the college also encouraged top high school students from the area to take half-tuition courses on campus. The clear intent was to entice some of them to continue at Ursinus for their college education, and some did.

Meanwhile, the college continued to attract more science majors than non-science majors. The growing imbalance caused Pettit to strike a faculty committee to seek redress. A humanities planning grant proposal and other efforts resulted but had little effect on the demographics. These problems in recruitment made the management of college finances in an inflationary economy doubly difficult. They lay at the heart of the faculty-administration conflict that surfaced a year later. The need to devise an out-and-out marketing program for the college was becoming increasingly evident to the administration. Traditional liberal arts colleges such as Ursinus, however, had not yet acknowledged the need for aggressive marketing and promotion tactics. The very word "marketing" still rang a sour note if it arose at all at this time in colleges such as Ursinus. Pettit and his administrative staff were perceptive and canny among their peers. Yet, they did not have the skill set or the disposition to make the major changes--some years later to be dubbed "strategic"--needed to reverse the negative trends that this fall's outcomes clearly reflected.

4 December 1974 An ad hoc faculty committee on attrition reported on findings from a student survey and made recommendations to faculty. The committee urged faculty colleagues (1) to try to be more responsive to students' needs and (2) to explore ways of making offerings more flexible. The president had created the committee because of continuing concern over the percentage of voluntary student withdrawals. Dean Bozorth at this same meeting presented the additional fact that, for every student dropped for academic deficiency, the college lost five for other reasons. Bozorth reflected on the effect that inflation was having on the purchasing power of faculty paychecks. If the college had kept one of every three students who left for personal reasons or transferred to another college, he said, it would have retained income equal to the sum of the increments in faculty salaries for the year.

1 July 1975 The high school FOREIGN LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT for entering students was liberalized for Evening School students. By waving the requirement for two years of foreign language in high school, the college conceded the special situation of "non-traditional" late starters in college who did not take the academic track as high school students years before. However, they had to complete a foreign language at Ursinus through the intermediate level before qualifying for their degree. Some years later that graduation requirement for Evening School students would be liberalized.

20 September 1975 RECRUITMENT for the 1975-76 year, contradicting expectations, produced a favorable enrollment. With 329 freshmen and about 70 students transferring into upper classes, the total enrollment counted well over 1100 at the start of the academic year. In his fall board report, President Pettit acknowledged his worry over a slow start and a lag in applications through the early part of the year. He continued to see Ursinus's recruitment process in the context of external stresses and strains: "The slowness was anticipated...because of inflation, unemployment, the shift to public institutions with lower tuition and to some extent the increased demand for job-related training."

The president gave details of the college's effort to overcome these perceived inhibitors. Among other innovative promotional activities, he reported increased activity in recruiters' travel and in the number of visits to college nights at high schools.

Although intensified effort produced favorable short-term numbers, concern about enrollment did not lessen. Traditional conditions remained constant--especially the overabundance of demand by science majors, a lack of demand by students with other interests, and dependence on a geographically limited area of recruitment. Recruitment would remain an annual challenge for Ursinus for the foreseeable future, especially after 1980. The demographic forecasts showed a sharp fifteen-year decline in the number of teenagers in the middle Atlantic region and elsewhere in the nation.

25 August 1976 Admissions director GEOFFREY DOLMAN appealed to alumni for help in identifying prospective students for Ursinus. "Reports on the plight of private colleges are appearing everywhere," he wrote in the August Bulletin. He happily went on to say that the class entering in the fall of 1976 had good academic credentials. He published a schedule of fall recruiting visits in the region and urged alumni to stop by or send a prospect for the 1977 entering class.

This open acknowledgment of a desire for referrals betokened the continuing uncertainty of recruiting outcomes as the decade advanced. It contrasted with the more reticent stance of Dolman and his colleagues in the sixties. Then, the demand of baby boomers for entrance to colleges of quality outstripped supply.

Such ad hoc innovations in the recruiting process were responses to a situation previously unfamiliar to Dolman and his staffers. (President Pettit had a longer memory, having been responsible for admissions before his move to the dean’s office in 1954.) The need for a more aggressive and systematic program for recruitment loomed larger and larger through the decade of the seventies. An essential issue was that of placing the college more clearly in the public mind so that families of prospective students would better know the sort of academic experience their sons and daughters would receive. The one clear-cut marketing factor throughout was that the Philadelphia area public saw Ursinus as a top-flight place for pre-medical education. That strength contributed not only the hard core of recruiting success; it also made it virtually impossible for the admissions process to produce a more academically balanced mix of students.

B. Providing Financial Aid

14 April 1971 Students holding SELF-HELP JOBS lost an appeal to change the prohibition against their possessing cars on campus. The college based the long-standing prohibition on the assumption that if students had enough money to own a car they did not need a self-help job. Self-help jobs were limited in number. The college thought of them as a means of aiding the neediest students. The scholarship committee of the faculty proposed lifting the prohibition. Ironically, it found that some self-help students needed a car to get to their self-help jobs. The faculty opposed the recommendation "on the grounds that it would complicate the already serious parking problem and that where exceptions to the present rule were justifiable they could continue to be made administratively." (Faculty minutes, 14 April 1971).

This small action exemplifies the degree to which the social and academic programs intermixed at the time. Students sensitized by the social revolution of the sixties were chafing at the close tabs on behavior held by the administration. Here the role of the faculty in continuing a controlling role on behavior emerges in a small but telling way.

15 February 1973 The financial aid officer, W. ARTHUR SWITZER, met with his peers from other Pennsylvania private colleges to share information on aid procedures. Colleges attending included Albright, Beaver, Cedar Crest, Dickinson, Elizabethtown, Franklin & Marshall, Gettysburg, Lebanon Valley, Lehigh, Lycoming, Moravian, Muhlenberg, Susquehanna, Ursinus, and Wilson. The group was known as "Overlap Group 14," a designation used by the College Scholarship Service (CSS).

Federal financial aid laws and the College Scholarship Service were heavily influencing the practices in awarding aid dollars to students. The public goal was to facilitate access to higher education and to make an even playing field on which students could choose the college they preferred, irrespective of cost. Switzer's summation of the meeting, held at the Host Farm in Lancaster, had a note of urgency. The thrust was to establish as much uniformity of practice as possible through open sharing of information about procedures, charges, athletic scholarships, and the like.

It followed on the heels of a national CSS meeting in Chicago a month earlier. That meeting aimed at bringing into line some institutions that were deviating from standard need-based tables. Switzer reported on broad agreement in Chicago to a set of standard tables. He said they were newly sensitive to middle and upper income families.

More than half the group that met in Lancaster, including Ursinus, had "rolling admissions" rather than a fixed date of acceptance (Ursinus did not change until the 1980s). Had a fixed date of notice of admission been the uniform practice, Switzer's note suggests that the group would have met "to agree on parental contributions and awards prior to sending out all pre-freshmen award notices." (Because they had a common date of notification of acceptance, the Ivy League institutions were able to do what Overlap Group 14 could only wish to do. Years later, when college recruiting and admissions became an out-and-out marketing process, the government accused the Ivy League colleges of price-fixing in violation of anti-trust law.)

The intent to provide access AND choice for the student by eliminating price as a factor was genuine. That intent led to the steady growth in the contribution of college funds to students for financial aid, on top of public funds. Students received the awards based on their individual need analysis, irrespective of their relative academic quality in the pack of admitted students. For Ursinus, this came to mean that many students with middling academic records received the biggest aid packages. As the general cost of aid rose, the added expenditures (not yet openly called a discount) thus did not have a positive effect on the academic quality of the student body.

Switzer captured the idealistic spirit of financial aid policy at the time. He was commenting on the group's discussion of price competition: "We agreed that we cannot afford to enter into price competition, no matter how slim the application situation may become. Such competition can in the long run only be mutually destructive. Secondly, it is not in the best interest of the student who should be able to choose his college for academic rather than financial reasons."

He cited a dramatic example in which a handsome "no-need" gratuitous offer from another college put "cruel pressure" on a student in deciding whether to attend Ursinus. "The young lady in question broke down and cried because this large offer forced her to think of the cost to her parents rather than her personal academic goals. In this case, the parents had the wisdom to remove the pressure from the student, but were themselves upset by this discrepancy in awards apparently springing from the same CSS system."

Then Switzer, aiming to keep his peers in line, added a homily: "We all agree that our needs analysis system is far from perfect, but the best that is available to us. Parents will question its results often enough without our adding to their doubts by highly disparate awards."

Before Division III enforcement of rules against athletic scholarships, colleges in Overlap Group 14 had a significant problem in establishing a truly even-handed aid program. Switzer's meeting notes on the discussion about athletic scholarships revealed the gap between the need-based ideal and the actualities of preferential packaging for athletes: "We let our hair down! Some of the group have real problems in this area and fully recognize the cost to the true financial aid program when large amounts of college funds are diverted to subsidize athletes.... Herein lies our dilemma and challenge! We must strive continually to bring all student aid funds into the needs analysis system so as to accomplish a better and more equitable distribution of available aid dollars."

In retrospect, we see an historical irony. The "marketing model" developed for recruiting in the 1980s. It openly embraced preferential packaging in the interest of shaping the qualities of the class. This pushed aside the even-handed, need-based ideal seen in this meeting. Thus, the colleges agreed to stop preferential packaging for athletes at about the time that they embraced preferential packaging as a general strategy to serve institutional objectives. The self-interest of the institutional members of Overlap Group 14 won out against the bureaucratically supported idealism of these early years of financial aid programming.

C. Graduating Students

15 November 1970 The 1970 FOUNDERS DAY convocation in Bomberger Hall served as the inaugural convocation for PRESIDENT WILLIAM S. PETTIT. Dr. Frederick W. Ness, President of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, delivered the inaugural address. Pettit was a friend of Ness. J. William Ditter, '43, Montgomery County court judge, and Ness both received honorary degrees.

6 June 1971 HARRISON SALISBURY was the guest speaker at commencement. Salisbury was then editor of the op-ed page of the New York Times. (Weekly, 13 May 1971) Other notables appeared at the commencement podium in the following years: in 1972, Ashley Montagu, author of The Natural Superiority of Women and internationally acclaimed anthropologist; in 1973, Rod MacLeish, news commentator and writer; in 1975, Brendan Gill, writer and editorial staff member of The New Yorker magazine; in 1976, Isaac Asimov, scientist and prolific author.

6 June 1971 PATRICIA ANN MELLON was VALEDICTORIAN at the 100^th annual commencement convocation. She graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor of science degree. LARRY G. SCHULTZ, also a science major, was salutatorian, graduating magna cum laude. Twelve graduates received the bachelor of business administration degree, offered in the Evening School.

In the six-year period, science majors and arts majors split the valedictory honors. CYNTHIA S. COLE was valedictorian in 1974. She took honors in mathematics. ROBERT J. HARWICK, a science major, took the top academic honor in 1975. Arts majors were valedictorian in the other years: JANE L. SIEGEL in 1972, DAVID S. WHITTEN in 1973, CYNTHIA R. FARINA in 1976.

The Evening School announced graduation honors for the first time in 1972. RUTH M. HECKLER graduated summa cum laude and JAMES R. DERSTINE magna cum laude.

7 November 1971 At the 1971 FOUNDERS DAY, artist Andrew Wyeth received an honorary degree. Others honored that day included the following: Henry C. Pitz, artist and author, and John W. Merriam, industrialist and art patron.

4 June 1972 ASHLEY MONTAGU was guest speaker at commencement in Helfferich Hall. It was the first public event in the new $3.9 million facility. Montague attracted campus interest because he appeared to be a precursor of the women’s liberation movement with his 1953 book, The Natural Superiority of Women. Rev. Dr. JAMES D. GLASSE, president of Lancaster Theological Seminary, and THEODORE A. BURTIS, vice president of Sun Oil Company, were honored along with Montague.

21 October 1972 HELFFERICH HALL was dedicated in conjunction with Homecoming Day. New tennis courts and a parking lot were completed along with the building. The gathering doubled as the traditional FOUNDERS' DAY for 1972. GEORGE MURPHY, former US Senator and screen actor, head of the US Football Hall of Fame, gave the dedicatory address for the building and received an honorary degree. Others honored with degrees were alumni leaders of the board, PAUL I. GUEST, ‘38, and THOMAS P. GLASSMOYER, ‘36.

Helfferich Hall already had been the site of commencement in spring 1972 for the first time. (Every commencement henceforth took place there until 1992. That year the conovcation took place on Patterson Field. Rain half way through scattered the crowd and class and platform guests. All retreated to Helfferich Hall, which had been set up in case of rain, for the completion of the program. Commencement programs returned to Helfferich Hall until 1996. A new tradition of outdoor convocations began on the great front greensward in front of the Berman Museum.)

3 June 1973 Guest speaker at the COMMENCEMENT CONVOCATION in Helfferich Hall for the graduating class of 293 members was ROD MACLEISH, radio commentator and writer. MacLeish, reflecting on the shift of attitudes since the late sixties, urged students to take responsibility for decision-making and warned them not to "cop out." By this time, many college students were appearing to do just that in the backwash of the hyperactive period that had just passed.

That morning, the REV. DR. HOWARD S. SPRAGG, head of the Board for Homeland Ministries of the United Church of Christ, delivered the baccalaureate sermon in Bomberger Hall. Honorary degrees went to the speakers and to HELEN PAYSON CORSON and GILBERT F. RICHARDS. Corson, the spouse of board member Philip L. Corson, had a reputation for conservative political views--she opposed the federal income tax, for example. Richards was president of the Budd Company, Detroit, which had a long history in the Delaware Valley.

Valedictorian was DAVID SCOTT WHITTEN and salutatorian was KATHLEEN ALICE YOUNG. Among the graduates who later distinguished themselves professionally were AIDAN ALTENOR, psychology major, who became superintendent of the Norristown State Hospital and WINIFRED BERG CUTLER, also a psychology major. Cutler was author of Hysterectomy and founded Athena, an organization dedicated to the emotional and physical health of women.

The college usually chose commencement speakers and honorees through a process influenced by a need for institutional symbolism, availability, and sheer practicality in getting a program finalized. President Pettit took student and faculty ideas into account but kept control over the selections. The resulting roster, as in the case of the 1973 convocation, could sometimes appear to represent the administration's sense of the College's stance in the world. Corson's conservatism was probably a secondary reason for her position on the program. Pettit would have felt right in honoring her for being an authentic "character" who spoke her mind as she saw fit. Moreover, her husband Philip had proven to be a generous supporter of the college. The college would take every opportunity to cement his relationship, including the honoring of the spouse to whom he was devoted. The college probably hoped for some financial results from honoring Richards. However, that could not be part of a bargain, even in those days of relative tolerance by faculty of choices for honorary degree recipients. Richards did not respond to overtures to join the board. Pettit and the board may or may not have felt comfortable with MacLeish's slant on things. He was nonetheless articulate and urbane. He was not a knee-jerk "nattering nabob" (Vice President Spiro Agnew's lasting phrase) of the liberal press. Spragg was a character after Pettit's own style--certain of himself, driven by strongly held principles, unyielding in the face of opponents whom he felt were wrongheaded. As the executive vice president of the UCC's best-endowed wing, he controlled the expenditure of funds for human welfare. Pettit--and other board members--may have had doubts about Spragg's liberal social agenda. However, he was at the center of power of the denomination associated with the college. Helfferich probably got to know him when they worked together on the merger of the Congregational Christian Churches, from which Spragg came, and the Evengelical and Reformed Church. It would have been important to the administration to state symbolically, through Spragg's presence, that the college valued its church connection.

18 November 1973 At FOUNDERS' DAY ceremonies in Bomberger Hall, four notables received honorary degrees. THOMAS J. BEDDOW, '36, Washington attorney (he was counsel to the Hearst family when Patty Hearst was kidnapped), a long-time board member, would later head up the fund-raising efforts of the board. CALVIN D. YOST, JR., '30, professor of English and librarian, would later complete his history of the college's first hundred years. ALLYN R. BELL, JR., was a classmate of President Pettit's at the University of Pennsylvania. As president of the Pew family's Glenmede Trust Company, he favored Ursinus with financial support. FRANCIS BOWER SAYRE, JR., grandson of President Woodrow Wilson, was then dean of the Washington Cathedral and an eloquent pulpit preacher. He probably came to campus at the behest of chancellor DONALD L. HELFFERICH, who served with Sayre on the board of directors of the Presbyterian Ministers' Fund in Philadelphia.

2 June 1974 GERALD M. EDELMAN, '50, Nobel laureate, and JOHN H. WARE, 3^RD, accepted honorary degrees at commencement. Edelman received the annual Alumni Award in 1969. Ware was completing service in the US House of Representatives. He was a quiet but generous philanthropist and effective business executive. He headed up American Water Works Company and other entities from his Oxford, PA, office. Ware and Pettit knew one another from their undergraduate years at the University of Pennsylvania. Ware would become president of the Ursinus board of directors several years after the end of the Pettit administration. DETLEV BRONK, president of Rockefeller University, Edelman's colleague, also received honors that day. Finally, PAUL HAVENS, professor at Jefferson Medical College, received an honorary degree. In 1985, his son, PETER HAVENS, would join the board of directors of the college.

26 October 1974 Three NOTEWORTHY ALUMNI received honorary degrees at the FOUNDERS' DAY convocation. AUSTIN GAVIN, '30, was executive vice president of Peoples Power and Light Company, Allentown, PA, and would have a second career in retirement as executive assistant to the president of Lehigh University. For several years he led the alumni fund-raising program. JESSE G. HEIGES, '35, was legal counsel for Pfizer Co. in New York. His brother, Ralph, also an alumnus, had been president of Shippensburg State College in Pennsylvania. Their father, for whom Jesse was a namesake, of the class of 1898, after a career as dean at Shippensburg, returned to Ursinus to teach education courses before retiring. In his student years, the elder Heiges was a roommate of GEORGE L. OMWAKE, 1898, who became president of the college. RUTH ROTHENBERGER HARRIS, '36, was the dean of women at Ursinus and head of student activities. She was a dependable strength during the difficult years of unrest in the late sixties and early seventies and won the respect of students and colleagues for her evenness of temper, integrity, and adaptability. When the college equalized rules for women's dorms with those for men's dorms in March 1974, she calmly managed the change. Later, when major changes in student life policy came about in the subsequent administration, Harris became the first dean of students of the college, with responsibility for both men and women. As such, she managed far-reaching changes in the program, which for the first time permitted alcohol on campus and broadened the visitation of men and women in dormitories.

1 June 1975 BRENDAN GILL spoke at commencement and a future board president received an honorary degree. Gill, the witty regular of The New Yorker staff was riding high that spring in the list of best sellers for his in-house tell-all, Here at The New Yorker. His "pagan" message to graduates would no doubt have offended earlier worthies of Ursinus. But it seemed to fit well into the college community's effort in 1975 to lay the sixties to rest by striking a less tortured note. Gill said: "Since everything ends badly for us, in the inescapable catastrophe of death, it seems obvious that the first rule of life is to have a good time; and that the second rule of life is to hurt as few people as possible in the course of doing so." Moreover, he added, "Having a good time is an art like any other, and must be learned." (Gill died at age 83 in 1997.)

WILLIAM F. HEEFNER, '42, received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. It was the practice of the college in those years (it declined in the next administration) to confer such recognition on energetic alumni who gave notable service in the performance of their duties as board members. Heefner led the just-completed CENTURY II fund-raising program, which raised $5.7 million in new funds. He led a second campaign, Patterns for the Future, in the mid-eighties, and became president of the board of directors in 1991 after serving as vice president during the presidency of THOMAS P. GLASSMOYER,' 36. He relinquished the gavel in 1997 after successfully orchestrating the retirement of PRESIDENT RICHARD P. RICHTER, '53, and the search for and hiring of PRESIDENT JOHN STRASSBURGER.

The baccalaureate speaker, HOWARD G. HAGEMAN, president of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, also received an honorary degree.

2 November 1975 The college devoted FOUNDERS' DAY to a recognition of its relationship with the old German Reformed Church. The Rev. Dr. JOHN C. SHETLER, head of the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference of the United Church of Christ (UCC, successor denomination to the German Reformed Church and the Evangelical and Reformed Churches), spoke on the origins of the Reformed movement. The college event helped mark the first German Reformed communion in America 250 years before at nearby Falkner Swamp Church. Three UCC churchmen received honorary degrees: GEORGE H. BRICKER, librarian and dean at Lancaster Theological Seminary; WAYNE A. LUTZ and HOWARD PAINE, church pastors.

Shetler became a member of the Ursinus board of directors in spring 1976. He served the college loyally and well until he accepted an offer to be a life member of the board in 1996. He was especially helpful to presidents and the board in interpreting the college's historical origins and relationships and applying them to the contemporary college. He had a practicing theologian's understanding of the first Ursinus president's success and failure in establishing a religious position within the Reformed movement.

30 May 1976 ISAAC ASIMOV, widely read author of some 172 books, spoke at commencement. Asimov was something of a hired gun for commencement ceremonies in those years. He spoke at another Delaware Valley college commencement that same week. A pretty price was paid by both. Asimov focused on the population explosion as the greatest future threat after thermonuclear holocaust. He advocated the rising liberation movement of women to increase human brainpower and lower the birthrate.

The college conferred an honorary degree on HENRY P. LAUGHLIN, '38, for his leading work in psychoanalysis. He became a member of the board of directors in 1967. Also honored were RUSSELL C. BALL, head of Philadelphia Gear Corporation, who headed the college's corporate giving program, and the baccalaureate speaker, NATHANAEL M. GUPTILL, minister of the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ.

The demographics of the graduating class offer a profile of the college's enrollment pattern: there were 108 BS degree recipients and 98 BA recipients. Evening School graduates numbered 12, including one BA recipient; the other 11 received the Bachelor of Business Administration. CYNTHIA FARINA was valedictorian.

Board president THEODORE R. SCHWALM concluded the ceremonies with the announcement that the board had elected RICHARD P. RICHTER, vice president for administrative affairs, to succeed President Pettit.

D. Maintaining Relations with Graduates

30 October 1971 The ALUMNI ASSOCIATION mounted "the biggest Homecoming celebration in the history of Ursinus." Alumni Secretary MILTON E. DETTERLINE collaborated with volunteer chairperson R. BLAIR (MIKE) HUNTER, ‘35, to bring a variety of exciting activities to campus. They included a visit by the 160-member Mt. Carmel, PA, Mounties High School marching band; four skydivers; the big band of Arlen Saylor for a dance in Wismer Hall; a chicken barbecue cookout. These were in addition to the traditional activities: a football game (with Geneva College), the crowning of a queen at halftime, and other athletic events.

In making these happy plans, alumni leaders were doubtless reacting to the politicized national environment that had colored campus events darkly over the past few years. They probably saw the extraordinary entertainment as a statement that "normality" in college and national life still lived. Fraternities, sororities, and others with a traditional stake in Homecoming proceedings criticized the non-Ursinus components of the big schedule. The Alumni Association would continue experimenting with Homecoming formats in the future. However, it would give renewed emphasis to homegrown activities and interests.

12 October 1972 GERALD M. EDELMAN, '50, received the NOBEL PRIZE for medicine, topping a list of alumni high achievers. Edelman went to the University of Pennsylvania for his medical degree and then to Rockefeller University, where he did the research leading to his discoveries of the chemical structure of antibodies against disease. Even before receiving the Nobel award, the Ursinus Alumni Association gave him the 1969 Alumni Award. The college conferred an honorary degree on Edelman at the 2 June 1974 commencement program, where Detlev Bronk, President of Rockefeller, an acquaintance of President Pettit, also received honors. Pettit taught Edelman organic chemistry. Pettit, according to the Ursinus Bulletin, remembered Edelman as "a remarkably alert and perceptive student who had a rare drive and almost a premonition that someday he would achieve recognition for his studies."

It was a banner time for high-achieving alumni. ROBERT M. MCALLISTER, '42, head of virology research at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, captured coast-to-coast headlines for his research on the human cancer virus. HENRY P. LAUGHLIN, '38, author of Neurosis, a standard text in the field, became president of the American College of Psychoanalysts. ROBERT D. MYERS, '53, professor of neuropsychology at Purdue University, won recognition for his research on the neurochemical bases of behavior. A future president of Catawba College, Ursinus's sister institution in North Carolina, STEPHEN H. WURSTER, '63, started on his career path in 1972 as an administrator at Ball State University in Indiana. President Richard Nixon nominated HERMANN F. EILTS, '43, to be the first US ambassador to the newly formed nation of Bangladesh. Eilts had previously been ambassador to Saudi Arabia (1965-1971) and in November 1973 would become ambassador to Egypt. That led to his important role in the Camp David peace agreement crafted by President Jimmie Carter between Israel and Egypt. Eilts's duties as ambassador to Egypt prevented him from becoming a candidate to be president of Ursinus when President Pettit retired in 1976.

12 January 1973 An ad hoc faculty committee released survey findings showing the extent of POSTGRADUATE EDUCATION achieved by Ursinus alumni. GEORGE FAGO and MARVIN REED co-chaired a faculty committee to stimulate applications for fellowships and to discover and encourage candidates for graduate study.

The committee surveyed alumni to find a base line for the college’s past performance in producing graduate students. With a fifty percent response to its questionnaire, the committee gathered reliable statistics. They showed that 42% of those surveyed held MA, MS, or Ph.D. degrees. Another 24% held M.D. or R.N. degrees. Some 16% held the M.Ed. degree, reflecting the important place of teacher education at Ursinus. The findings gave the committee some reassurance that Ursinus indeed in the past had given priority to preparing students to go on to graduate study.

The committee existed because of a perception among faculty that Ursinus might not be living up to its avowed role as a liberal arts college of high academic quality. Many believed that, for whatever reason, Ursinus might be slipping from its past record of graduate school placement. They felt that greater application of effort and resources would improve its performance. The survey findings reinforced the general desire to improve the perceptions and the realities of the college’s academic program as a gateway to the professions. Some faculty believed that the emphasis on social issues, especially dormitory rules, fostered by both the administration and students, tended to thwart this desire. By putting greater priority on preparation for graduate studies, they believed that the faculty could help restore the equilibrium of the college and refresh its academic priorities. (Weekly, 12 Jan 1973)

2 June 1973 WALTER WM. (Wally) TROPP, '34, completing four years as president of the Ursinus Alumni Association, welcomed several hundred alumni back to campus for annual Alumni Day.

A practicing attorney from South Jersey, a stronghold of Ursinus alumni, Tropp was an outstanding football player as an undergraduate. He brought the flavor of "old-college-try" heroics to alumni affairs during his term of service. MILTON E. DETTERLINE, alumni director in these years, encouraged Tropp's nostalgic note. He also supported Tropp in developing new area clubs for alumni and in bringing younger alumni into the leadership of the association. Tropp was an engaging advocate for President Pettit among the alumni. He went out of his way to thank both President Pettit and his wife, Marion, for their diligence in attending area meetings of alumni. Said the outgoing alumni president to the old grads assembled for lunch in Wismer Hall: "I learned as much as anything else, that Ursinus is something more than a College; it is a way of life."

The new Alumni Association president, GLENN E. ESHBACH, '39, seemed to exemplify Tropp's observation. He had been in fuel sales throughout his career, first with Atlantic Refining Company, and then as president of his own business, the Princeton Fuel Oil Company. His loyalty to Ursinus and to its leaders rested in the values of the generation of alumni who graduated in the hardship years of the late 1930s. They went into World War II shortly afterward and came home to the Cold War era when the US economy led the world for two decades. They believed in the way of life that they served with such enthusiasm in war and peace, and they saw the college itself as a part of their system of belief.

Eshbach manifested his deep-rooted sense of connection with Ursinus by drawing upon his hard-ball sales experience. He was in the handful of Ursinus graduates who responded eagerly to the call from then vice president DONALD L. HELFFERICH in the early 1950s to start the "Loyalty Fund." This formally began what later became the annual giving program. Eshbach promoted Ursinus among his '39 classmates with an enthusiasm that seemed beyond understanding to some of them. He conducted a massive letter-writing campaign to fellow alumni over the years. In his letters, he boasted of the advances of the college, reported on the good deeds and accomplishments of contemporaries, and constantly encouraged alumni to give funds to the college.

When his unabashed commitment to conservative positions began to pepper these alumni letters, some applauded and others took offense--but everyone acknowledged his sincere desire to advance the college. In later years, after his alumni presidency, he reached beyond the class and wrote to those in classes before and after '39. Then he embraced the honor group for men, Cub & Key (to which he had been named as an undergraduate) and for women, the Whitians, and began sending letters to them. Since Cub & Key and Whitians pulled generations of older and younger alumni together once a year, Eshbach stirred up generational debates through panels and discussion groups. Always deferential to his "brainier" classmates, he had a knack, nonetheless, for pushing alumni to talk about core issues. For staff members like Detterline, he was both a joy and a trial to work with.

At heart, Eshbach was a celebrant of the good that Ursinus people did in the world. That was his theme as the new alumni president. "As I anticipate the years ahead in this office of President of the Alumni," he said, "I recognize that one of the real strengths of Ursinus lies within its Alumni. Thus, it will be almost a single purpose to identify many individuals among us who lead and who have led exemplary careers whether they be professional or service-oriented."

30 June 1974 REV. MILTON E. DETTERLINE resigned from the staff as alumni director and chaplain. Detterline joined the staff in 1969 after a successful ministry at a United Church of Christ church in Tamaqua, PA. He creatively combined his ministerial duties on campus with his duties as alumni director. He wrote a series of profiles of alumni for the Weekly, intended to recognize accomplishment and project role models for current students. Detterline remained in the circle of the college as pastor to the Helfferich family at St. Peter's Church in Knauertown, PA, a charge he accepted after leaving Ursinus. When D. L. Helfferich died in 1984, he edited a special edition of the Ursinus Bulletin on Helfferich's life and accomplishments.

3 April 1975 An ALUMNI-STUDENT COMMITTEE exposed students to opportunities for careers in the new world of computers. Four returning alumni told students about their computer-based jobs. They focused on programming and analysis of systems. One of the alumni, former Alumni Association president JOSEPH T. BEARDWOOD, III, ‘51, was president of his own computer manufacturing company.

31 May 1975 CHARLES W. GEORGE, '35, received the 1975 ALUMNI AWARD at Alumni Day. George later served a term on the Ursinus board of directors. He was vice-president and general manager of General Electric's Aerospace Equipment Division, an important position in the "military-industrial" complex of the Cold War period. Like other notable alumni of his generation, George came to Ursinus through the network of the Evangelical and Reformed Church. He spent his boyhood at the Bethany Children's Home in Womelsdorf before enrolling at Ursinus as a physics major. With a graduate degree in physics from Duke University (1940), George taught high school before entering the corporate world. He became acquainted with William Pettit when Pettit joined the faculty during George's student years. Pettit as president felt an affinity with George and looked to him for guidance and support during his administration. (George would have studied physics under John Mauchly, who later at Ursinus did the early thinking that produced the world's first functioning electronic computer, ENIAC, in 1946.)

1 July 1975 HENRY W. PFEIFFER, '48, began a two-year term as president of the ALUMNI ASSOCIATION. Pfeiffer became active in alumni affairs in part through the urging of President Pettit. They were summertime neighbors on Nantucket Island and talked about Ursinus matters in the ocean breezes there. Pfeiffer's service as an alumni leader and then as a member and officer of the board of directors was continuous and exemplary. He was a member of the presidential advisory committee that recommended the successor to President Pettit in 1976. His leadership in fund-raising, in the recruiting of students, and in promoting the name of Ursinus in the northern New Jersey area exemplified alumni involvement at its best over a long period. He served on the board through the entire Richter administration and into that of President Strassburger.

12 February 1976 An ALUMNI ASSOCIATION leader told students about the value of an Ursinus education from the perspective of graduates. GLENN E. ESHBACH, ‘39, in a letter to the Weekly, testified to the importance of Ursinus in preparing students for success in life and work. He cited chapter and verse from letters he received from fellow Ursinus graduates. As a long-time supporter of the college’s conservative temper, Eshbach probably sent the letter to counterbalance the negative student opinion then filling the student newspaper. He and many other alumni worried over the polarization and negativism that seemed to dominate student opinion. They were sympathetic to President Pettit’s effort to hold the line on social change. They nonetheless worried about the counterproductive effects on the tone of campus life. Yet, few came forward with concrete alternative suggestions to help the administration to deal with the problem. As one of the few, Eshbach had the courage of his convictions. He put forth his letter to show students that, in contrast to their negative opinions, alumni felt gratitude for the preparation they received.

18 April 1976 CUB AND KEY brought alumni and "class of 77" members together to reflect on the goals of excellence in liberal education. Sparkplug for the event was GLENN E. ESHBACH, ‘39. It was the first such gathering in more than a decade. Cub and Key alumni of note spoke on their indebtedness to their Ursinus education--LT. GEN. RAYMOND B. FURLONG, ‘46, Commander of the Air University in Alabama, and ROBERT MECKELNBURG, M.D., ‘52. WILLIAM E. WIMER, 39, and Chancellor D. L. HELFFERICH reminisced about the origin of the honor society in 1939. By highlighting outstanding former students, Eshbach hoped to demonstrate to current students that they were undervaluing their educational experience. The complaints about the college from students were troubling to him and other alumni leaders. PAUL GUEST, '38, and others on the board took a firm stance for the college’s conservative philosophic temper and the social policies embedded in it. Eshbach did his part to support the college by offering examples rather than precepts. Examples, he felt, would speak louder than preachments about the values of the college. His approach had its own idiosyncratic spin, but students and administrators alike recognized the good intention behind it.

10 May 1976 ANDREA VAUGHAN DETTERLINE, '72, became ALUMNI SECRETARY. Vaughan, a Collegeville resident, brought professional advertising and marketing skills to the staff, needed in the growing competitive environment of higher education. She had been an honor student, officer of her class and co-editor of the yearbook. Detterline injected the perspective of a recent graduate as the administration sought to adapt the college to the broad social changes among Ursinus families since the 1960s.

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