by Robin Elliot

In the early twentieth century Drexel participated in training for nurses. At that time nursing was primarily a female profession. There were Nurses Training Schools throughout the country, including Philadelphia. Drexel began offering new scientific classes for nurses which would supplement their regular training. Drexel did not intend to simply offer scientific courses; instead they wanted to help the student be an all around better nurse. The curriculum would therefore include English Language and Literature to ensure proper writing skills. They would also take classes in Vocal Expression. Students in the nursing program would have access to public lectures and the library from Drexel. It is unclear if this program was implemented at Drexel at this time.

By the early 1920's Drexel was participating in a city-wide program of educating nurses. This was in conjunction with the School for Preliminary Courses in Nursing. The courses taught included chemistry, nutrition and cookery, and bacteriology. These all required laboratory time for students. The program continued until 1930, when the Nursing School ran into financial problems. The female director of the School for Preliminary Courses in Nursing, Mabel F. Huntly, went to Columbia University for a Masters’ Degree in 1929. She is an example of the growing number of highly educated women during the twentieth century.

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by Robin Elliot

The Sarah van Rensselaer Dormitory was the home of female students at Drexel for many decades. In promotional pamphlets Drexel accentuated the educational and social aspects of college life for female students. There were three main tracks for undergraduate female students, Business Administration, Home Economics and Engineering. The Women’s Student Government Association was a crucial part of student life because of its direct connection to dormitory life. Students were required to live in the dorms if they did not have parents or an aunt or uncle who could house them while at Drexel.
Dorm rooms were similar to dorm rooms today. However more furniture was provided by Drexel than is usual for college students today. Drexel students had beds, mattresses, lamps, rugs, glass curtains and other furniture in their rooms when they arrived. Students were told to bring towels, sheets, and blankets, similar to today’s students. The rooms had hot and cold running water, but bathrooms and showers were available on each hall.

The first floor of the Van Rensselaer Dormitory was dedicated to social activities for students. On each floor of the dormitory was a piano for use by students. Now the Van Rensselaer Dormitory offers suites for students, in previous decades it had single, double, and triple rooms for student use. The price of residency at the dormitory varied from $225.00 to $290.00, depending on the type of room the student was in. Board included two meals a day on weekdays and three meals a day on Saturdays and Sundays. The dormitory housed the dining rooms, where students had most of their meals.

http://wikimapia.org/6318/, accessed 02/27/2008 11:18 am

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by Robin Elliot

The growth of the School of Engineering at Drexel is evident in a program for the Federation of Engineering Societies, Engineers’ Day held at the Drexel Institute of Technology in 1952. While none of the speakers were from Drexel, except for Dr. Robert C. Disque, who made the Summary speech of the day, there were a large variety of speakers from all facets of academia and industry. The speakers spoke on subjects of vital interest to both engineers and to society in general. The inclusion of metallurgical engineering in the program is evidence of the growing strength of the engineering department at Drexel during the1950’s. This department was not added to the curriculum until the 1950’s.

The different industrial companies are evidence of the region’s industrial past. RCA was located in Camden, New Jersey and was a prominent employer in the area. The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was a longstanding company having many interests in the field of engineering. The conference also had a talk by an assistant director of the Atomic Energy Division of the United States Government. All of these companies and government departments had direct need for students from Drexel for their future employees.

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by Cheryl Klimaszewski

To browse the records of the Office of the President during the tenure of Dr. James Creese is to gain an understanding of the Institute’s place in the world as much as it is a view to the development of the Institute itself. Creese sat on the boards of many prominent local institutions and served on numerous government committees at both the state and local levels. On January 11, 1961, Creese presented a statement before the Joint Committee on Unemployment of the Senate and House of Representatives of the Legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

In his statement, entitled "Industrial Science in Relation to Full Employment," Creese called for the Commonwealth to increase funding that would expand research opportunities and cooperation with local industry. He called for a joint effort between the private, corporate and public sectors to provide such funding, and drew on the examples of M.I.T., the North Carolina Research Triangle, and the British system of awarding university grants as exemplary models. He emphasized that Drexel’s “strategic” placement, both by its physical location and in its role as educator and industry partner, positioned it as a key player with which the Commonwealth could work to temper the rise in unemployment.

Part of the impetus for the development of new research projects were the long-term goals of the West Philadelphia Corporation, a group formed in 1959 and comprised of the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel Institute of Technology, Presbyterian Hospital, Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science and the Philadelphia College of Osteopathy. This group was formed to improve both academic and residential life for the area of West Philadelphia as a whole, which included the development of research opportunities in West Philadelphia, thereby increasing the growth potential for all institutions involved.

Visit the Drexel University Archives to read a copy of Dr. Creese’s statement to the Pennsylvania Legislature and to learn more about the wide-ranging activities and involvements of Drexel’s fifth president. For more information about the archives, visit our home page: http://library.drexel.edu/archives/default.html

See also the records of the West Philadelphia Corporation, held by Temple University’s Urban Archives:
http://library.temple.edu/collections/urbana/wpc-350.jsp?bhcp=1

Penjerdel metropolitan project
http://library.temple.edu/collections/urbana/urb24.jsp?bhcp=1

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by Robin Elliot

In 1966, Drexel celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary with its Diamond Jubilee. The theme was “The Responsible Man in a Free Society of Exploding Technology”, which amply illustrated Drexel’s history and the current goals of that time period. The president of Drexel was William Walsh Hagerty, who was the eighth president of Drexel, serving from 1963 to 1984. He was educated as an engineer at the universities of Minnesota and Michigan. Prior to his presidency of Drexel he was the dean of the college of engineering at the University of Texas. The brochure produced at the time of the anniversary demonstrates the tremendous growth of the school and the specific time period in which it was produced. The theme illustrates how conscious Drexel was of events in the world, such as the atomic bomb and the environmental hazards of the war in Vietnam, both of which were directly connected to scientific research.

The brochure highlighted several important aspects of Drexel’s past and present. The main focus was to show how the school had gone from a newly founded, relatively small school with minimal resources of staff and facilities to become a major part of the educational landscape of Philadelphia. The photographs of Drexel students from the early years and from the 1960’s ably demonstrated the huge societal and academic changes which had affected Drexel. While the computer would be barely recognizable today with laptops and PDA’s, in 1966 computers were generally much larger and were used by the government and companies or academic institutions, not individuals. This is demonstrated by a photograph of a professor showing students how to use a computer.

The College of Engineering and Science was an extremely important part of the academic focus of Drexel in 1966. In Drexel’s early years the electrical engineering program had grown from a single class which was given by only one professor. By 1966 it was providing students with baccalaureate, master’s and doctoral degrees in a variety of engineering fields. There was also a substantial research budget for the College of Engineering and Science.

The College of Home Economics in 1966 had also changed from its previous incarnations at Drexel. In the early 1890’s when Drexel opened it had a Department of Domestic Economy and a Technical Department for the education of women. By 1945 this had become the College of Home Economics, which was offering a diverse program for female students. In 1966 there were three departments in the College of Home Economics-Nutrition and Food, Design, and Human Behavior and Development. Incidentally the College of Home Economics became the Nesbitt College of Design, Nutrition, Human Behavior, and Home Economics in 1974. This was the culmination of the previous decade’s changes to the Home Economics curriculum.

The anniversary was celebrated with a Founder’s Day Convocation held on December 6, 1966 at The Academy of Music in Philadelphia. The Honorable Arthur J. Goldberg, Ambassador to the United Nations, gave the chief address of the day. He was given an honorary degree from Drexel for his work as the Secretary of Labor under President John F. Kennedy, as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in 1962, and in 1965 was made an Ambassador. He spoke before the United Nations on a proposal to end the Vietnam War which was not successful but that further enhanced his eligibility for the honorary degree from Drexel.

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by Robin Elliot

Ardenia Chapman wrote a memorandum to the Council of Deans on the place of women in higher education in 1960. It is a very enlightening look at how one woman viewed the position of women in society prior to the second wave of feminism in the 1960’s and 1970’s. She linked the uncertainty over the status of women in general society with the debate on how women should be educated above the high school level. Chapman wrote that Drexel had always seen women as having three primary functions in society “the role of a thinking individual; the role of a homemaker and citizen, and a wage-earning role.” Chapman stated that Drexel educated women for all three functions and that these were not contrary roles to that of men in society. She also wrote that any differences that did exist between men and women were decreasing. One recommendation that Chapman made was to have a public meeting on Drexel’s role in society. The purpose was to show how Drexel had historically helped women’s education. It was specifically stated that the speakers should be anyone, regardless of gender, who is an expert and could reliably speak about their views. The meeting’s purpose was to support the idea of women as citizens and that every citizen needed to have an education.

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by Robin Elliot
During the 1950's Drexel continued to offer female students the opportunity to receive a degree in the College of Business Administration. The curriculum for the College of Business Administration was varied and included different types of administrative work for women. Kenneth Matheson, Jr., was the Dean of the College and was responsible for the program and facilities.

Typewriting was an important part of the curriculum for several specialties for the College of Business Administration. These included Business Teacher Training, Administrative Secretarial, Junior Secretarial, Cooperative Business Administrations, Four-Year Business, and Retail Management tracks. The length of training depended on the specific program the student was enrolled in. Although not directly related to the Business Administration program, the Library School and Home Economics students also received some typewriting training. The Administrative Secretarial track and the Retail Management track students took office machine classes. Accounting was another important facet of the curriculum for Business Administration students regardless of the specific track they were on. During the 1950’s a student of the College of Business Administration would be in a classroom between eighty and eighty-five percent of their school day. This compares to only fifty percent for Home Economics students and sixty percent for an Engineering student.

The Cooperative Business Administration student would be required to take a certain number of generalized classes such as English, History, Sociology and other similar courses, in addition to the specific business themed courses of their major. The business courses included marketing, finance, accounting, typing, office machines, and general business classes. These courses were part of a new curriculum implemented during the 1950’s in the Cooperative Business Administration, Commerce and Engineering, and Four-Year Business Administration majors. The new requirements resulted in college juniors choosing one of four possible concentrations- finance, accounting, marketing, or management and tailoring their remaining coursework on this choice. In the College of Business Administration was the Retailing Curriculum which included merchandising where students took retailing, marketing, and advertising.

During the 1950’s Drexel began offering an advanced course to female college graduates resulting in a certificate, not a degree. This track would provide female students with secretarial training and with more specific business knowledge. The courses included Human Relations, Business Law, Accounting, Office Management, Introduction to Management and Typing. These courses were similar to those required for full-time graduate students and if a student was interested in enhancing their career they would be eligible for the M.B. A. program at Drexel.

For more information on the College of Business Administration and male and female student curriculum, please see collection UR 1.7 James Creese Administrative Papers.

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