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A GREATER GETTYSBURG the trustees, bluntly told them that "for some time I have been greatly concerned with the fact that in the field of medicine our students have not measured up to our standards in other fields." He reported that "almost half of our students who enter medical colleges fail to graduate" and that, as a result, "the College must exert great care or the reputation we enjoy in other fields will be over-shadowed in our medical colleges." Not surprisingly, the minutes recorded that "this question was very fully discussed."230 Over the next three years the president and faculty, supported by the board, with its generous complement of physicians, took decisive action to reverse the situation. In June 1939 Hanson told the trustees that he was dismissing the head of the biology department and seeking a replacement who was "more intimately acquainted with both the atmosphere and the requirements of our best Medical Schools," and also that he intended to invite "three men of national standing in the field of graduate training in Chemistry" to review that department's program and make whatever recommendations might be necessary to bring its work "in line with the best traditions existing in this field of study." The 1940 catalogue contained a greatly lengthened section addressed to the premedical students, requiring those who wished a recommendation to register as such, follow a detailed course of study (which was in effect a premedical major), obtain a B average in science courses, and pass a special premedical senior comprehensive examination with distinction. A newly formed premedical committee, consisting of the dean and the three science professors, was charged with examining the record of candidates at the end of their sophomore year and deciding whether they should be advised to continue in the course. Those given a negative signal were told to change their major field or pursue their premedical studies somewhere else. Late in 1941, after consulting the deans of many medical schools, the curriculum committee recommended a considerably revised premedical curriculum, which the faculty passed only three days before the attack on Pearl Harbor.231 230The faculty curriculum committee believed that the situation had already scared away some potentially good students. Minutes of October 10, 1939, Office of the Dean of the College. 231The 1942 catalogue contained two recommended courses of studies for premedical students, one for those majoring in biology and another for those majoring in chemistry. Some of the requirements of two years earlier were either softened or dropped entirely. This change reflects in part the rivalry which existed between the biology and chemistry heads. In considering the 1941 revisions, the curriculum committee invited each man to present his views in person, but at separate meetings. 57