UA-R-GC-1914-01-01-1937-11-12_Page-013

Two main suggestions have been made for undergirding the College. The one is Dean Galt's plea for the institution of a Primary School, so that the whole gamut of education from the kindergarten up shall be offered under the University's auspices. He feels that the plt ce to catch students who will become permanently attached to the University and its type of education is in the lower grades. So far the Trustees have not felt able financially to carry such a load and have also questioned the propriety of putting under a University administration and on a University campus schools for elementary or primary education. The other suggestion is that the entire atmosphere and character of the College be changed, transforming what is now practically a day school in which contact with the American staff is increasingly limited to class hours, into a residential school in which the whole American College staff will be in vital contact with the students even beyond class hours, and in which a distinctive "college life" may be built up as in LLierican colleges and preparatory- schools. Of course it is recognized that not all students, perhaps barely a third of them, might be residential. However, the proposal really concerns the faculty and staff fully as much as it does the students, for it means that the future College faculty will be developed on the basis of its mei.ibers having residential contacts with the residential core of the student body by living on the same campus 4nd sharing in its life. In this way, it is felt, we can win a distinctive j:lace in the life of the country by moulding the characters and personalities of our students, in contrast with other. schools which are generally were "bureaus of information" with no interest in the students' life. In spite of much personal interest of our teachers, in spite of a corn iendable adviser system introduced by Lean Galt and in spite of an effort to maintain an Alumni Association, our present equipment in the city, and the day school pattern we folloL prevent the realization of our original ideals for sending forth a strew: of students so superior in character, mental discipline and thoroughness of training, as to be recognized at once as the distinctive product of the American University at Cairo. This analysis of the situation must not be regarded as disparaging past efforts which have been rightly described as heroic and which have done much toward solving the purely educational or curriculum problems of the College. In facing removal to the suburbs, however, it would be a supreme tragedy if we merely carried over to a less accessible location the idea of a day school. Unless the future College staff is pre-pared to share in the development of the residential ideal by being itself residential on the campus, my own judgment as President is that we should stay where we are. Our present proposals for removal to the suburbs are based wholly on the promotion of a residential life in which the entire faculty will cooperate. In addition to a need for clarified vision on the foregoing problems, there is a need for a clearer financial policy. Our present budget seems to mark the present limit of our supporting constituency; perhaps it is really in excess of their normal contributions, since for two years deficits have been averted only through an eleventh hour contribution in five figures from a single source. The answer to this situation of anxiety, if not of peril, is boviously the building up of our endowment funds until the income from endowment shall take up the shortage of a dependable annual income from living donors. But this in turn requires that the operating budget shall not keep on increasing. As President I have been loathe to say to each Department head that the present resources of this Department must be re-garded as quite stationary, fearing that this would cut the nerve of creative planning. I therefore suggest this compromise, that at its annual meeting in the fall the Board fix the sum total within which the work on 9