DEAN OF FRESHMEN

Perhaps the most influential change of policy outlined by Dean Hanford is the decision to appoint a permanent Dean of Freshmen. The reasons for the change and the avowal to retain one or, it is to be hoped, two, Assistant Deans are fully explained. But of all the duties incumbent on the new officer none are more important than the supervision of Freshman instructors and advisers.

The primary efforts of the administration must be aimed at the improvement in Faculty personnel. As a system, the guidance of Freshmen has reached a point at which it must rest until the teaching positions are occupied by capable and interested men. It would not be too extreme for the permanent Dean of Freshmen to act in the capacity of a personnel director in a great business corporation. The advisers, the instructors, and the Assistant Deans are in closest-contact with the students. The need for a further administration officer is not to duplicate the work of these men but to superintend it.

By "sitting in" occasionally on courses and sections, by maintaining close personal acquaintance with advisers and instructors, the Dean will be in a position to help select men, weed out dead matter, and keep the interest in advisees and students alive. If his recommendations are considered at odds with the traditional idea of faculty prerogative in the organization of departments, they nonetheless must be accepted as a necessary part of the present bureaucracy.

In defining the new position in this way, it will be seen that the Dean of Freshmen is really a Dean of the Freshman Faculty. The first year has been organized in such a way as to give the Freshmen guidance from various sources. The problem now is to make these sources productive. Dean Hanford recognizes this as the vital factor. The devotion of the new officer to just this task should be a means of fulfillment.