University of Virginia Library

XXXIII. University Extension

Finally, one of the principal aims of the School of
Education has been to use the extension lecture as a
means of spreading the scholastic usefulness of the University
of Virginia. The extension courses of that
institution have been described as the organized and
systematic endeavor to bring some of the advantages of

the culture and training to be found within the college
precincts to people who reside without. It has put
the resources of a great seat of learning, whether
in the form of faculty, libraries, laboratories, and mechanical
shops, at the complete disposal of other communities
and their inhabitants. In other words, it has
brought the University of Virginia to the doors of innumerable
men and women who cannot go to it; it has
been a helping hand and an illuminating torch held out
to every city, every town, every village, and every rural
neighborhood in the State; it has been the connecting
link between every part of the University and the actual
condition of life in the entire Commonwealth.

The most highly developed form of university extension
to be discovered in the United States, at that time,
was the one associated with the principal scholastic institution
of Wisconsin. The latter's staff of experts
reached out to every branch of the social and economic
affairs of that commonwealth. The extension lecture
system was organized, in 1912–13, at the University of
Virginia, on a similar pattern. Professor Heck, of the
School of Education, was appointed the director; and
a course was laid off, with distinct lines of cleavage.
These were as follows: (1) class meetings, given up
to lectures and quizzes, held in the buildings of public
schools and the local Young Men's Christian Associations,
and the like; (2) instruction in technical themes
imparted to persons employed in trades and machineshop
work, and also to salesmen, and so on; (3) preparation
of syllabi for debaters belonging to clubs situated
without the precincts; (4) public lectures on topics
relating to the public service and welfare. Among
these topics were sanitation and preventive medicine;
village surveys and improvements; commission government

for cities; municipal beautification; civic economics;
and other subjects of a kindred character.

During the first year following the inauguration of the
extension course, twenty-seven members of the Faculty
were enrolled in the list of lecturers. The broadness
and variety of the ground traversed by them are demonstrated
by the nature of their themes. These themes
pertained to some aspect of history, medicine, law,
chemistry, languages, literature, geology, education,
physics, political science, effect of war on race, tree life,
philosophy, the high school as a social institution, literary
haunts in England, the tariff, good roads, soap
bubbles, study of living things, mineral resources of Virginia,
life of the ancient Greeks, and the Solar System.
There was not a department of the University which
was not represented among the speakers. It was asserted
that, during one year, one professor alone, Rev.
W. H. Forrest, had delivered sixty-two lectures and
addresses, and sixty-nine sermons, beyond the precincts,
the larger proportion of which had fallen distinctly
within the category of extension work.

But perhaps the most indefatigable of all the laborers
in this great province was Professor C. Alphonso
Smith. In 1913, beginning January 10, and ending
March 28, he spoke on sixteen occasions, and his itinerary
carried him as far south as Rome, in Georgia, and
as far north as Chambersburg, in Pennsylvania. Between
January 11 and April 2, 1915, he delivered eight
extension lectures; in 1916, beginning January 15, and
ending May 8, thirteen. In the course of these lecture-tours,
he visited, not only large cities, like Washington,
Richmond, and Atlanta, but small centres of population,
like Earlysville, in Albemarle County, Buckingham
Court-House, East Radford, and Bedford City. There

were other professors who established records that indicated
almost equal activity.

In his annual report for 1913–14, Professor Kepner
suggested the arrangement of a programme of extension
work for the general School of Biology and Agriculture.
He proposed that two towns should be selected, in which
a series of thirty lectures and demonstrations should be
given by the instructor in charge, assisted by his students;
that the series should extend to plant and animal
morphology and physiology; and that its aim should be
to supplement the teachings of the public schools and
the State department of agriculture. In 1915–16, he
delivered a course of seven extension lectures along
these clearly defined lines. "We are both taking an
active part," said Professor Lewis, his colleague in
1917–18, "in the campaign of visiting the high
schools in the interest of higher education. We are
also taking an active interest in the development of
work in science in the Virginia high schools. In this
connection, I am serving as president of the science
section of the Virginia Educational Association."

John S. Patton, the librarian of the University,
counseled, sometime before the plan was actually
adopted by the State, that the University should establish,
out of its own collection of books, the travelling
library for the benefit of the public schools of Virginia.
The scheme submitted by him was that packages of
pamphlets, magazine articles, and speeches, relating to
questions to be debated by specific public schools, should
be forwarded to their representatives as often as needed
for use.

Professor Heck was so much encouraged by the success
of the extension courses, that, in 1912–13, he predicted
that the hour was close at hand when the University

of Virginia would possess a corps of professors
whose principal duty would be to deliver lectures in the
country at large,—not simply one here and another
there, as was then the case, but, in succession, a series
in each place, on some theme of supreme importance to
that community; and all without cost to its people, beyond
payment of the travelling expenses of the lecturer,
—which was the rule already in operation.

A step promotive of still greater practical usefulness
was the establishment of a formal bureau of university
extension at a later date. "This bureau," said President
Alderman at the time, "will spread the campus
of this University out to every hamlet in the State, so
that, if the State needs trained science to foster economic
organization in its life, to educate its children, to bring
order out of chaos in its public revenues, to become
aggressive and effective in the application of scientific
knowledge and business organization to the conduct of
the State's affairs, it can hope and expect to find such
aid in its State University." The bureau was under
the general supervision of Director Maphis, assisted by
a committee of twelve professors. Its purpose was proclaimed
at the date of its organization to be to advance
the welfare of the people of Virginia (1) by giving
instructive lectures in different communities; (2) by encouraging
the formation of literary societies in the public
schools through gifts of documents pertinent to debate;
(3) by loaning package libraries to all schools and associations
asking for them; (4) by distributing gratuitously
the Virginia High School Quarterly; (5) by issuing
bulletins that recorded the fruits of the researches
and investigations of the University Faculty; and (6)
by submitting, whenever there were vacancies in the
schools, information about possible teachers.

Before the close of 1918, the mission of the bureau
had expanded far beyond these original limits. What
did its work consist of at the end of the Ninth Period?
First, it scattered a fund of all sorts of general knowledge
by sending out library books and answering questions;
second, it stimulated public discussion and debate
by assisting the High School Literary and Athletic
League; third, it assigned a definite number of professors
annually to deliver lectures beyond the precincts;
fourth, it organized county and State clubs, which were
to make a complete study of social conditions in the
different counties and large community centres; fifth,
it promoted school hygiene and encouraged educational
enterprises; sixth, it brought to the University conferences
on rural life, or sent out University workers to
take a hand in every branch of constructive and demonstrative
civic effort; seventh, it issued bulletins and publications;
and eighth, it initiated courses of study by correspondence
for the benefit of those persons who were
unable to matriculate.

In September, 1916, F. M. Alexander was appointed
to the position of assistant director of the extension
bureau. His duties consisted of the regular routine
office-work; writing articles for various periodicals; delivering
addresses; assisting with suggestions the Virginia
High School Literary and Athletic League; managing
the advertisement of the summer school; collecting
data on correspondence study; establishing the
honor system in each new high school; arranging the
dates for extension lectures; and editing publications.

It was principally due to the active interest and wise
foresight of Professor Archibald Henderson, of the
University of North Carolina, that the plan of exchanging
professorships between the different Southern institutions

of higher learning was adopted by them. Henderson
had drawn attention to the fact that the University
of Virginia, the University of North Carolina, and
Vanderbilt University, had, during many years, exchanged
baseball, football, and debating teams,—a
policy which had undoubtedly fostered kindly feeling
between these institutions, but which had produced no
real comity, because it was not the most vital form of
intercommunication. There had been lacking withal
some influence that would have brought them together
socially and academically; and this, Professor Henderson
thought could be found in an exchange of distinguished
teachers.

In 1911, there was created an exchange professorship
between the United States and Japan, the object of
which was to cultivate a more cordial intercourse between
the peoples of the two nations. The following universities
shared in this important international arrangement:
Yale, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Virginia, Illinois,
and Minnesota. It was provided that, during every
alternate session, a professor from some one of the imperial
educational institutions of Japan should deliver
at each of these seats of learning a series of addresses
on the different aspects of Japanese life. On the
alternate years, an American professor from one of the
six American universities mentioned was to visit Japan
to lecture on some feature of American civilization.
The first appointee on this foundation who appeared
at the University of Virginia was Dr. Nitobe, of the
University of Tokyo. He was followed by the distinguished
dean of the agricultural college attached to
Tohoku University.

But of greater international interest still was the
American lectureship which the Emperor William established

at the University of Berlin, and which was named
in honor of Theodore Roosevelt. This position had
been filled by men of such high reputation in their calling
as Professor Burgess, of Columbia, Professor Hadley,
of Yale, and Professor Wheeler, of the University
of California. Professor C. Alphonso Smith, who had
been recently elected to the Edgar Allan Poe chair of
English in the University of Virginia, was chosen as
their successor. He was appointed by the Prussian
Ministry of Education, on the nomination of the trustees
of Columbia University. "I was the first Southerner to
occupy the position," said Professor Smith afterwards,
"and in my references to Thomas Jefferson and Joel
Chandler Harris, I felt a sort of ambassadorial responsibility
to place in their proper setting two men
of whom the Germans knew little." Smith, who was a
direct descendant of John Kelly, who rebuffed Jefferson's
overture for the purchase of his land for the site of
the University of Virginia, had filled the chair of English
Language in the University of North Carolina,
and had been dean of the graduate department in that
institution. During his tenure of this chair, he had delivered
numerous addresses before clubs, schools, colleges,
universities, State legislatures, and educational conferences.

His absence from his post at the University of Virginia
extended from September, 1910, to the middle of
March, 1911. He was the first of the appointees on
the Roosevelt foundation to confine his utterances to literary
subjects. He chose for his public introductory
lecture "American Literature," and for his seminar
work, for the benefit of special students of English
letters, "Edgar Allan Poe." His inaugural address
was delivered on November 10 (1910), and was attended

by an audience of two thousand persons,—among
them, the Emperor and Empress and the American Ambassador
with his staff. In conversation with Professor
Smith, after the conclusion of the lecture, the Emperor
confessed that he had never read any of the works of
Poe, although he had exhibited a fair knowledge of
American humor and the American short story. "Another
surprise," says Professor Smith, "came when,
after commending to me, in terms of measureless laudation,
Chamberlain's amazing Foundations of the Nineteenth
Century, and after I had asked him what place
Washington and Jefferson occupied in the work, he said,
'I do not recall that either of them was mentioned.'"
" In his study of history," adds Professor Smith, "democracy
and all democratic movements had been ignored,
and so they. were ignored by his favorite historian."

The seminar lectures were delivered in a hall one wall
of which was adorned with a large picture of the University
of Virginia; and the book-marks of the pupils
were copies of a photograph of Poe's room in West
Range. "Everybody in Germany," says Professor
Smith, "placed Poe on a pinnacle." When asked by a
German who was the most famous woman born in
America, he replied that the choice would fall between
Pocahontas and Dolly Madison. "But what is your
answer? "he asked the German. "Why" was the
prompt reply, "I should have said Annabel Lee."

Professor Smith was invited to repeat the series of
lectures,—which related exclusively to American literature,
—at the University of Leipsic, but was compelled,
by the brevity of the time at his disposal, to decline.
Early in February, 1914, a number of lectures in return
were delivered at the University of Virginia by a distinguished
German scholar.