It’s February and all over the country, college seniors are thinking about their plans after graduation. Grad school will be the default for many of them. Do those young people realize that there was a time when going to graduate school would have necessitated crossing the Atlantic on an ocean liner? For a first-hand account of what life was like for a woman pursuing a doctorate in a German university in the early 1900s, see http://wp.me/p20I1i-nN.
The model for graduate education was developed in Germany in the nineteenth century. The first and second generation of American scholars were trained in German universities including Berlin, Gottingen, and Heidelberg. The influence and prestige of such universities was without equal even when compared to Oxford and Cambridge in England, and the University of Paris in France.
Events following World War I took their toll on German universities. The fragility of the Weimar Republic, stark economic realities, and the rise of anti-Semitism weakened the German universities. Later, the Second World War and the political partition of Germany ended the advantage they once held.
Johns Hopkins
Johns Hopkins, a wealthy Baltimore capitalist, used his fortune to create the Johns Hopkins University which was organized in 1874. The institution opened its doors in 1875 under the Presidency of Daniel Coit Gilman. Gilman, who was previously President of the University of California – Berkeley, was attracted to the challenge of creating a new institution.
Daniel Coit Gilman, as a student at Yale University, became a member of Alpha Delta Phi and the Skull and Bones Society. In 1856, he also co-founded the Russell Trust Association, the legal business identity of Skull and Bones.
Gilman sought to create the first American university which emphasized research and graduate education. He systematically gathered an outstanding group of faculty who soon developed an institution of high quality.
Johns Hopkins University emphasized the research seminar, the use of laboratories for supervised experimentation, the support of field-based research, an academic press, and the development of a research library. Academic journals were also to be an important part of the enterprise and Hopkins faculty became the editors of such journals as: The American Journal of Mathematics (1878); The American Chemical Journal (1879); and The American Journal of Philology (1880).
The success of Hopkins was not lost upon other American colleges. Harvard soon embarked upon an ambitious program of graduate education as did Yale, Columbia, and Princeton. Newly endowed private universities, such as Stanford and Chicago, also emulated the Hopkins plan.
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I am a day late for anniversary greetings to two Greek-letter organizations. On February 1, 1929, six young men of Chinese descent founded Pi Alpha Phi at the University of California – Berkeley, signed the fraternity’s Constitution in both English and Chinese. The fraternity’s founders are D. Wing Tom, Elmer Leong, Chack Chan, Tim Jang, George Lee, and Wing Chan, the only founder to be born in China. The second chapter of Pi Alpha Phi was founded at Stony Brook University (formerly SUNY – Stony Brook) in 1990.
Early Pi Alpha Phi members
On February 1, 1994, Alpha Phi Gamma, an Asian-interest sorority was founded at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Its founders are Allex Choi, Candy Cunanan, Christine Nguyen, Sandie Rillera, Kolleen Kim, Grace Hsieh, and Jennifer Oku. In 1999, a second chapter was established at Northern Illinois University.
Alpha Phi Gamma crest
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2015. All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/
