Page 2
Summer Session Kansan Tuesday, July 3, 1962
A Necessary Role
The University of Kansas received an unique award last week. Its students did not receive the award, nor the faculty, but the alumni did.
The award was given by the United States Steel Foundation for the most increased alumni support among all the colleges and universities in the United States and carried a stipend of $5,000.
CHANCELLOR W. CLARKE WESCOE announced that the money would be used to advance alumni relations to keep with the spirit in which the USSF made the prize money available.
During 1960-61 the KU Alumni Association jumped 60 per cent in the number of alumni contributors and 103 per cent in the dollar support from the alumni.
Money from alumni helps the University in many ways.
DONATIONS GO into the Greater University Fund which is administered by the KU Endowment Association very carefully. Many of the donations are designated for special purposes by the contributors.
Many donors designate their money for the loan fund, from which students needing financial help can borrow to help them secure a college education. Other donations go for scholarships, art works for the museum, books for the Library and for research projects.
Money which is not designated for a particular
purpose is placed in a reserve fund to be used in times of emergency. In case a particular department needs additional equipment and the money is not available, this reserve fund can be used.
SOMETIMES A PROFESSOR may be asked to read a paper he has written at an important conference. Money from the reserve fund can be used to finance his trip.
The KU alumni's contribution to the KU campus and its students is undeterminable. The earmarks of its tangible contributions are all around us; for example, nine scholarship halls which were built totally from alumni donations.
Its intangible contributions are the many students who owe their college education to scholarships and loans which the alumni have made available through their contributions.
KU OWES MUCH to its alumni, for they have done an outstanding job in supporting the university, and all hopes are that the enthusiasm will be continued. We are sure it will.
Fred Ellsworth, the executive secretary of the KU Alumni Association, best describes the role the alumni play. Their support, he says, "makes the difference between a real fine university and an ordinary one."
KU has fine alumni support and is definitely a "real fine university."
Steve Clark
An Educated Person's Values
By Mrs. Rachel VanderWerf
(Editor's note: Recently the Journal of Chemical Education carried this guest editorial by Ms. Van Dusen, of the chairman of the KU department of chemistry. The mother of six, she speaks from both conviction and experience. These are re-printed here with the permission of the editor of the Journal.)
A personal library is one of life's greatest possessions. This is the kind of statement no reader of the "Journal of Chemical Education" will argue with. It ranks along with politicians' remarks in favor of love, motherhood, and lower taxes. But (as with politicians) an educator's actions speak louder than his words, and actions often belie the scientist-educator's belief in this ideal. The plain statement of fact is that most chemistry teachers do not encourage their students to accumulate libraries.
And why not?
"BOOKS ARE expensive and students cannot afford them."
Students can afford cars and clothes - often more and better
than their professors! They can afford fraternity dues, corsages, week-end "blasts." And we are all glad they can have this fun side of college. But to accept their frivolous spending of money without question while encouraging a penny-pinching attitude toward the tools of their profession is to abdicate the unique responsibility of the college. Must teachers fall in with the pattern set on Madison Avenue for American culture?
Like some of you, I was a child during the depression. Yet our family's favorite Saturday afternoon excursion was to Muething's Book Store in Columbus, Ohio. Today's students, if they have not had the opportunity to absorb a reverence for books from their parents, surely have a right to expect to gain it from their teachers.
"Book collecting is all very well for literature students, but chemistry books go out of date."
OF COURSE they do. McPherson and Henderson is out of date, and if I want to read an up-to-date exposition of atomic structure I
look it up elsewhere. But McPherson and Henderson still has an honored place on my bookshelves.
Dr. McPherson autographed my copy when I was a freshman. Four years later, when he was acting president of Ohio State, he handed me my diploma. Al Garrett, Larry Quill, and Conrad Fernelius lectured to me with their copies of that same book on the table before them. I could not give up my copy of McPherson and Henderson. It is too important a part of my life.
"But today's students, with well-equipped libraries available, do not need to own books."
I RECALL HEARING of a college professor who wrote the publisher for a second complimentary copy of a certain text. The first, he said, was so popular among his students that he usually could not even locate it. So if the publisher would only send him another, he planned to chain it to his laboratory desk where it could never be taken away.
Not need books? A scholar worthy of the name wants them.
Worth Repeating
Research . . . has become a badge of honor, an excuse for the flight from teaching—and a sign that despite all our lip service to liberal, enlightening, and philosophical learning, we find individual and general security only in the trappings of specialization. And this wholesale mania for research as a self-justifying activity, without regard to its need or its object, has produced a corresponding folly in our culture-at-large—the no less deplorable cult of creativity. Creativity, which has come to be equated with happiness, is seen as the counterpart and complement of research, the complete article as against the fragmentary, the source of private pleasure as against the mere industry that is required for earning one's daily bread. — Jacques Barzun
Outlets for the expression of opinion by students are always needed. The need is especially great today when mounting enrollments tend to isolate the student, to make him feel he is more a cog in a machine than part of a continuing educational process. Student newspapers provide forums in which all kinds of problems are discussed, and not just by the relative few who serve as editors.
$$
* * *
$$
But such a forum functions properly only in an atmosphere where the free expression of ideas—including ideas that are critical of the status quo, unpopular ideas—is encouraged. Of course it requires forbearance to grant freedom of expression to students hardly dry behind the ears, who may use this privilege to question the motives and abilities of distinguished scholars and educators. Of course it may demand patience beyond the ordinary to concede that the student critic—however wrong-headed he may be—should be permitted to express his opinions.—John M. Harrison
An educated man is not merely a technician, a manipulator of test tubes, a researcher who knows how to look for articles through a library index. He is a person who highly prizes learning for its own sake and who cherishes the evidences of learning. You sell the teaching profession tragically short when you apologize to students for asking them to buy books. You should be inspiring them to want to do this. Books are a thinking man's tools. We need students who are proud to own books and who delight in using them well.
My job right now is raising children. I expect to pay dearly for their college education. In fact, college will be the largest single expense in our all-time family budget. I do not begrudge this. I am willingly giving up bigger and better cars and houses along with interesting foreign travel. But I do want my children to get an honest education — not just a technical re-tooling. I want them to graduate with the proper perspective on creative ideas and ephemeral pleasures, on books and cashmere sweaters. I want—I expect—them to gain from you, their teachers, an educated person's set of values.
SUMMER SESSION KANSAN
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Steve Clark and
Karl Koch ... Co-Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT Bonnie McCullough and Bill Woodburn, Co-Business Mgrs.
THE ENEMY WITHIN, by Robert F. Kennedy (Popular Library, 50 cents)—the recent best-seller by today's attorney general. Kennedy became somewhat of a celebrity as chief counsel of the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, and his book deals with such investigations as those concerning James Hoffa of the Teamsters.
$$
* * *
$$
WEBSTER'S NEW WORLD DICTIONARY OF THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE (Popular Library, 50 cents)—632 pages that should be of great help to university students engaged in writing English themes, term papers, etc. The volume is based on the college edition of Webster.
$$
* * *
$$
COUNT LUCKNER, THE SEA DEVIL, by Lowell Thomas (Popular Library, 50 cents)—an incredible story of an adventurer who sailed under many flags, hunted kangaroo in Australia, was a prizefighter, wrestler and beachcomber, bodyguard to the president of Mexico, and blockade-runner of the entire Allied fleet in World War I.
$$
* * *
$$
DICTIONARY-DICCIONARIO, compiled by Carlos Castillo and Otto F. Bond (Washington Square Press, 60 cents)—a new edition of a Spanish-English, English-Spanish dictionary. The volume is authorized by the University of Chicago.
HOW TO BE ACCEPTED BY YOUR COLLEGE, by Benjamin Fine (Popular Library, 75 cents)—a new edition of the well known book by the Pulitzer prize-winning writer on education. The book has been praised as valuable for parents who have children contemplating college entrance.
HOW TO BUILD A BETTER VOCABULARY, by Maxwell Nurnberg and Morris Rosenblum (Popular Library, 50 cents)—a guide designed to enrich the reader's knowledge of words. The book includes actual vocabulary tests from university and Civil Service examinations.
$$
* * *
$$
$$
***
$$
MN
$$
* * *
$$
THE FORTUNES OF CAPTAIN BLOOD, by Rafael Sabatint (Popular Library, 35 cents)—a swashbuckler, first issued in the 1930s, about the dashing English pirate. Light and superficial, it should provide good summer reading for persons who want escape.
$$
* * *
$$
A DICTIONARY OF SYNONYMS AND ANTONYMS, by Joseph Devlin (Popular Library, 75 cents)—enlarged edition of standard reference work of World Publishing Company. The volume contains a 5,000-word pronunciation guide.
* *
BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMAN, by Herman Melville (Popular Library, 50 cents)—both the Melville novel and the play by Louis O. Coxe and Robert Chapman are included in this new paperback. The story itself is the last work of Melville, a grim story of a young British seaman and a malignant officer.
***
TO APPOMATTOX, by Burke Davis (Popular Library, 75 cents)—a novel about the nine days preceding the end of the Civil War. A Literary Guild selection of 1959, the book won high praise from Saturday Review, Baltimore Sun, Detroit News, among others.
$$
***
$$
$$
* * *
$$
THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Popular Library, 35 cents)—a compilation of some of the better-known tales of the famous detective, including "The Red-Headed League," "A Case of Identity," etc.
THE NEW MATHEMATICS, by Irving Adler (Signet Science Library, 60 cents))—an explanation of mathematical concepts evolving from addition, subtraction, multiplication and division into such terms as group, ring, field and isomorphism.
***
$$
* * *
$$
A HISTORY OF RUSSIA, by John Lawrence (Signet Mentor, 75 cents)—a study which stresses major forces and individuals in Russia history. The author goes back to the tribal cultures, the rise of Kiev, the coming of Genghis Khan, the strenthening of Poland; the break-up of ruling families. He describes the emergence of Russia under Ivan and Peter, the social revolution of the 19th century, and the recent rise of the Soviet state.
MATHEMATICS IN EVERYDAY THINGS, by William C. Vergara (Signet Library, 75 cents)—a research engineer's examinations of such subjects as number theory, Euclidean geometry, and everyday matters such as the division of the day into 24 hours.
$$
* * *
$$
MAO TSE-TUNG, edited by Anne Fremantle (Signet Mentor, 75 cents)—an anthology of the writings of the leader of China. The volume is a paperback exclusive assembled by a woman who has been an editor for the General Assembly of the U.N. and the writer of several books. The book is divided according to historical periods of the Chinese Communist party. Most of the writings come from Mao's "Selected Works."
* *
COMMUNIST CHINA'S STRATEGY IN THE NUCLEAR AGE, by Alice Langley Hsich (Prentice-Hall Spectrum, $2.25) an analysis of China as a potential nuclear power. The author discusses China's governmental system, the development of Chinese military thinking and doctrine, the decision to develop nuclear weapons, the impact of nuclear warfare upon foreign policy, and what we might expect from China as a nuclear power. The book is a Rand Corp. research study.