The History of Goucher College, 1930-1985 / Frederic O

Frederic O. Musser Gaucher College, ^^ 1930-198S ^% .^Wfc % .^ivf^^^^^l Frederic O. Musser The History of Goucher College, 1930-198S When Goucher College was founded in Bal- timore in 1885, its mission was to provide quality education for women. Goucher would pursue that mission for the next century. In this sequel to an earlier history that chronicled the college's first fifty years, Frederic O. Musser tells the story of Goucher's second half-century. Drawing on the college archives as well as on extensive interviews with faculty, alumnae, and staff, Musser presents an overview of Goucher's history since 1930 and looks at the changes those years have brought to Goucher student life. He describes the war years, when Goucher women studied air navigation, radio elec- tronics, and naval cryptography ... the postwar enrollment crisis brought on when the Baltimore Evening Sun published ex- cerpts from the chaplain's "sex sermon" . and the turbulent 60s, when campus pro- tests against racial segregation led to the arrest of some Goucher students. Goucher's second half-century was a time of transition and new challenges. In the early 1930s, President David A. Robertson introduced a radically new curriculum. A decade later Otto Kraushaar oversaw the move from downtown Baltimore to the college's present location in the city's northern suburbs. Kraushaar's successor, Marvin B. deficits that Perry, Jr., faced heavy budget threatened the quality of Goucher's educational program. Rhoda Dorsey succeeded in returning Goucher to a sound financial (continued on back flap) The History of Gaucher College, 1930-198^ The Goucher College Series Frederic O. Musser The History of G o u c h e r College, 1930-19S5 The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore and London © 199° The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The Johns Hopkins University Press 701 West 40th Street Baltimore, Maryland iizii The Johns Hopkins Press Ltd., London ©The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39. 48-1984. Library of Congress Cata!oging-in-Publication Data Musser, Frederic O., 1930- The history of Goucher College, 1930-1985 / Frederic O. Musser. p. cm. — (The Goucher College series) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-801 8-390Z-5 (alk. paper) I. Goucher College— History. I. Title. II. Series. LDzooi.GyyMSy 1990 378.75i'7i—dczo 89-35238 CIP To three outstanding women: Elizabeth Conolly Todd, who made the writing possible; Rhoda Mary Dorsey, who guided and supported the writer; and Alma Eliz- abeth Nugent, who made the writing readable. Contents Foreword by Eli Velder ix Acknowledgments xvii Part One The Robertson Administration (19^0-1948) One A Watershed Year: 1930 3 Two Restructuring the College (1930-1937) 9 Three The Beginning of "Greater Goucher" (1938-194Z) 29 Four The Final Years of the Robertson Administration (1941-1948) 44 Part Two The Kraushaar Administration (1948-196-7) Five Early Perceptions of Goucher by a New President (1948) 57 Six Completion of the "Minimal Campus" (1948-1954) 67 Seven Completing the Campus: The Final Stage 75 Eight Goucher's Remarkable Real Estate Transactions 85 Nine Faculty, Students, and Curriculum (1948-1967) 92- Ten The Alumnae Fund and the 75th Anniversary Campaign 118 Eleven Controversies and Dilemmas 125 Twelve Student Life in the Kraushaar Era 132 Part Three The Perry Administration (i<)Gj-i^j^) Thirteen Student Activism: The Temper of the Times 149 Fourteen The Committee on the Future of the College 161 Fifteen Major Financial Problems: Reality versus Mirage 174 Sixteen A Final Overview of the Perry Years 189 Part Four The Dorsey Administration (1973-) Seventeen A New President Faces Old Challenges (1973-1979) 197 Eighteen Other Developments in the Life of the College (1973-1979) 207 Nineteen The Goucher Academic Program (1973-1985) 215 Twenty The End of the First Hundred Years (1980-1985) 233 Afterword The Transition to Coeducation 247 Notes 253 Bibliography 283 Index 285 Foreword ^^ta^^^spi'espite the major curricular restructuring that took place in 1934, 1958, 1970, and the early 1980s, the end product in 1985 bears an almost uncanny resemblance, mutatis mutandis, to the academic program with which the college opened in 1888." This fascinating conclusion reached by Frederic Musser toward the end of chapter 19, in which he describes Goucher's academic program during the Dorsey administration, prompts a number of questions. What were the bases for these four curricular revisions? Were these changes similar to those made in other institutions? If they dif- fered, how did they do so, and why? These questions led me to review some of the educational developments of the last fifty years to under- stand the curricular changes at Goucher College in the context of national trends and events. Those of us in the field of education view the curriculum as an organ- ized response to a series of basic questions. What, for example, is the role, purpose, or goal of a college education? Is it to prepare a student for a career, or is it to transmit a broad general body of knowledge and thereby provide each student with a common cultural background? Closely related to this is the question of whether everyone should be exposed to a generally accepted canon as represented by the Great Books approach, or whether each individual should have the oppor- tunity to select one's course of study. Further, what should be the empha- sis within each course? Should the student be expected to absorb a vast body of knowledge or should one emphasize the methodology inherent in each academic discipline? Finally, in a time of rapid expansion of knowledge, is it realistic to expect coverage of a field, or would it be more reasonable to concentrate on ways of thinking, methods of ques- tioning, and on the process of research in that field? These questions are just several examples of the diverse considerations undergirding various curricula. How one chooses to answer these questions depends on a number of factors. The political, social, economic, and intellectual forces of a given period, when combined with the nature of the academic leadership in a specific college, are some of the considerations leading to the adoption of a particular curriculum. As conditions change, existing course offer- ings are often found to be inadequate to meet the new demands. Hence, changes are continuously being introduced both within individual academic institutions and across the nation. The period between the two world wars witnessed extensive curricular change in institutions of higher education. Dissatisfied with the results of the free elective system first introduced at Harvard at the end of the nineteenth century, and sensing that this system no longer answered the needs of a post World War I society, educators began urging the adoption of a curriculum that would stress general education for all students, regardless of their immediate areas of interest and their ulti- mate professional goals. Colleges would emphasize the broad, general intellectual trends that would provide their graduates with the skills and understanding needed to respond to the changing challenges of society and to enhance the quality of their lives. Thus in the 19ZOS and 1930s, various colleges and universities created a series of survey and inter- disciplinary courses. Columbia introduced its famous "Contemporary Civilization" course, Chicago adopted a general course in the natural sciences titled "The Nature of the World and Man," and Dartmouth instituted its "Problems of Democracy." While this approach represented the major trend in curricular inno- vation, another philosophy, the Progressive Movement in education, grounded in and encouraged by John Dewey, produced an entirely dif- ferent curriculum. It shifted the focus from content and subject matter to the students themselves. Education, the progressive educators ar- gued, is all inclusive and should be tailored to the needs, interests, and abilities of the individual student. Instead of only academic courses or a curriculum imposed from the outside, education should include all as- pects of the human experience and encourage students to reflect on their needs, doubts, and confusions so as to reach some understanding of themselves and their society and to develop guidelines for their own behavior. By the 1930s this focus on the individual had made some inroads in elementary and secondary schools, leading a small number of colleges, including such schools as Bennington, Sarah Lawrence, and Stephens College, to adopt an experimental approach providing an individualized program based on the progressive principles of life ad- justment. These national trends occurred during President Robertson's administration at Goucher. How then does Goucher's curriculum of that period fit into this larger picture? The answer to this question is not a simple one, for the 1934 plan does not fit neatly into either the main thrust of general education or the progressive experimental approach. True, the eight objectives of the new plan are reminiscent of the seven cardinal principles actively espoused by the progressive educators. The Goucher objectives include such non-academic concerns as physical and mental health and establishing satisfying relations with individuals and with groups. Yet they also contain the academic goals espoused by those educators who created the more structured general education courses. Moreover, the restructuring of Goucher's curriculum into an upper and lower division and the introduction of the sophomore general examinations are reminiscent of the curricular reforms adopted at the University of Chicago, without, however, the sharp separation between the upper and lower divisions of the Chicago model. In short, Goucher's new plan emerges as a blend of the features of both the general education and progressive movements of the time.

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