Taussig, Holmes Hail Day, New Cornell Head, As "Able Administrator" and "Ideal Choice"

High praise for Professor Edmund D. Day, elected fifth president of Cornell yesterday, and former chairman of the Economics Department here, was forth-coming from both Frank W. Taussig '79, Henry Lee Professor of Economics, emeritus, and Henry W. Holmes '03, Dean of the Graduate School of Education.

Professor Taussig characterized Day as an "admirable teacher, administrator, and scholar," and declared that "with his character, attainment, training and personality, Day is an ideal man for the post."

Day, who took his undergraduate work at Dartmouth, and received a Ph.D here in 1909, served on the Harvard faculty as an instructor and assistant professor of Economics and chairman of the economics department from 1920-22. He left Harvard in 1923 to organize a school of business administration at Michigan, and later joined the administrative staff of the Rockefeller Institute in New York.

Commenting on Day's work in that position, Professor Taussig declared that "he took a leading part in bringing about the discriminating and generous use of the funds of the Foundation for promoting research in all directions. His experience was of a kind to qualify him for the university presidency, and his friends are not surprised that he has become head of Cornell. All who are in touch with higher education in this country can congratulate him and the University."

In his statement Dean Holmes drew attention to the fortune of Cornell in securing "a man who also mingles with ripened judgment a quick sympathy for individuals, particularly for young men and women, and an intuitive understanding." His complete statement follows:

"It is hard to imagine a more fitting appointment to the Presidency of any great American university than that of Dr. Edmund E. Day. He has seen higher education in America from every important standpoint. His undergraduate days were spent at Dartmouth, and he attained his Doctor's degree at Harvard; then he taught both large introductory courses in a popular subject and small advanced courses in technical branches of the same field. He then became head of a professional school in a great state university of the Middle West. His more recent work for the Rockefeller Foundation has brought him into close contact with problems and trends in general public education in the United States. In all these positions, his natural interest and his training have made him view educational institutions in their largest social perspective. Cornell is fortunate to find a man of such broad experience; and as it happens, a man who also minglese with ripened judgment a quick sympathy for individual, particularly for young men and women, and an intutive understanding of their problems."