The development of William and Mary’s physical plant was only one part of Chandler’s program of expansion during the 1920s. He strongly believed that the College should serve more people than it had been doing and that its educational mission should go well beyond offering the traditional liberal arts program and teacher preparation. He was determined to increase the size of the student body, to recruit a larger and more diverse faculty, and to expand the course offerings and programs both in Williams burg and, through extension and branch programs, in other communities from Norfolk to Richmond. Some of the changes he promoted were controversial, but no one could doubt that within the space of a few years William and Mary’s role in the educational system of Virginia had been significantly enlarged.

The Liberal Arts and More

Before 1919 William and Mary’s curriculum continued to be traditional, limited, and rigid. At the end of the Tyler period, the College offered a nondegree teacher’s diploma plus three degrees: the bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and master of arts. The master of arts degree required either 30 hours of course work beyond the bachelor’s degree, or 20 hours plus a thesis. Both bachelor’s degrees required 122 credits, at least 60 of which had to be in upper-level (“higher group”) courses. Eighty-two of the hours had to be from specified disciplines. For the bachelor of arts degree this meant 12 hours of Latin, 12 of Greek or a modern language, 15 of English, 6 of history, 10 of chemistry or physics, 9 of mathematics, 6 of psychology, 5 of biology, 3 of ethics or logic, and 2 each of economics and political science. The bachelor of science degree did not require Latin, only 12 hours of a modern language, but it did specify 15 hours of biology, 10 of chemistry, 10 of physics, 12 of mathematics, 6 of psychology, 9 of English and 8 of history, economics, or political science. For either degree half of the remaining 40 credits had to be from specified departments. There was no major or field of concentration.^[1] Clearly, William and Mary’s program more nearly resembled the prescribed curriculum of nineteenth century institutions than the elective system that had begun at Harvard and had swept through so many colleges and universities by the beginning of the twentieth century.^[2]

Between 1919 and the mid-1930s, William and Mary made a number of changes in its degree requirements, although much of the program continued to be pre scribed. During that same period, the vogue of free electives was itself increasingly challenged at many colleges in favor of a system that required a major subject and a variety of distribution courses.^[3] Thus, by the 1930s William and Mary’s relatively conservative curriculum seemed less out of step with the trendsetters than had been the case a few decades earlier. Having avoided one extreme, the College had less far to go to be in line with some of these latest reforms. It was a pattern (occasionally referred to by later members of the College community as the “William and Mary lag”) that would be repeated.

In 1919 the faculty increased the degree requirement to 126 hours. Two of these additional credits had to be in physical education, which became required for all freshmen. The prescribed subjects were reduced to 60 hours for the bachelor of arts degree and 64 hours for the bachelor of science. This change brought the final abandonment of 12 hours of Latin as a requirement for the bachelor of arts degree; instead, a student had to pass 6 hours in Latin, Greek, or mathematics, and 12 hours in a foreign language. For bachelor of arts degree candidates the number of hours in natural science, selected from biology, chemistry, or physics, was cut from 15 to 10, and 3 fewer hours were required in English and history. Most of the reductions in the bachelor of science degree requirements were achieved by lowering the total of number of hours in biology, chemistry, and physics from 35 to 20. Bachelor of science degree candidates still had to earn 12 credits in a foreign language (although by 1924 this had become 9 hours of a modern language).^[4]

The requirement of a major was first introduced in 1919, although it was rather different from later practices. Thus, one major of 18 credits and two minors of 12 credits each became a requirement for the bachelor of arts degree and two majors of 20 credits each or one major and two minors of 10 credits each a requirement for the bachelor of science degree.^[5] The next year this was changed to require candidates for both degrees to have either two majors or one major and two minors. In 1924 the number of credits in a major was increased to 30 and in a minor to 20. The major/ minor requirement was in addition to courses in other prescribed subjects (although some courses might count for both), which insured that a student’s work was distributed across several disciplines. With the addition of 3 more required hours in government, the total hours in prescribed subjects became 63 for the bachelor of arts degree and 61 for the bachelor of science degree. Despite a few changes in detail, including the increase in the physical education requirement from 2 to 4 hours in 1925, the basic requirements for the bachelor’s degrees set in the early 1920s remained intact until the major curriculum reform of 1935.^[6]

Some other changes in the curriculum were a result of the admission of women. In 1918 the College created two new departments, women’s physical education and home economics. The latter, which was set up with the assistance of a federal grant under the Smith-Hughes Act, was primarily designed for the training of teachers of home economics. To organize the new department President Tyler hired Edith Baer, who was at the time on the faculty of Drexel Institute in Philadelphia. Courses were taught in the science building. In addition, the College acquired a Practice House, situated on Jamestown Road, where three or four junior or senior students would live for a twelve-week period to gain practical experience in home management. Although Baer remained at William and Mary for only two years, she succeeded in establishing a program that, until the mid-1930s at least, continued to grow.^[7] The addition of home economics was in accord with Chandler’s emphasis on vocationalism; it also seems to have been accepted by students and faculty alike without serious opposition. Its place in the William and Mary curriculum was consistent with the argument which (to the horror of feminists) was increasingly heard in the 1920s, that colleges should train women for marriage and the home.^[8]

In 1920 the College made another response to the presence of women students when it began to offer courses in typing and shorthand. No college credit was granted for these subjects, however, until the session of 1931–32, when a secretarial science department was finally established and a major in the subject authorized. This was a short-lived venture, for the major in secretarial science was abolished in 1935, although the department continued to offer a few elective courses.^[9]

In 1931 William and Mary also responded to a very different sort of practical interest by becoming the first college to offer flight instruction as part of its program. The first two courses, Aeronautics 101 and 102, or ground school, introduced the students to aerodynamics, meteorology, navigation, engine construction, etc., in fourcredit academic courses taught by members of the physics department. Students could then go on to take the noncredit course, which provided flight training for a private pilot rating (Aeronautics 103). For this the College acquired three airplanes. Flight training was done at the airport, located a few miles northwest of the campus. The airport was owned by the city of Williamsburg until purchased by the College in 1933. Chandler had pushed the aeronautics program, in part at least because of his son Julian’s interest in aviation. But it did not long survive Chandler’s death and was dropped in 1935.^[10]

Although aeronautics was a special, and limited, case, it was only one of a number of Chandler’s curriculum innovations that moved the College further in the direction of technical and vocational education. In 1920 the College began to offer a number of preprofessional programs for those preparing for careers in agriculture, engineering, forestry, medicine, and social work. Although it dropped agriculture after two years, it added pharmacy in 1922, dentistry in 1924, and nursing in 1928. The details necessarily varied with each discipline, but the idea was to allow students to take their first two or three years at the campus in Williamsburg and then transfer to another institution to complete their professional training. Those who had done three years of work at the College would receive the William and Mary bachelor of science degree upon the successful completion of their professional program (after one or more years) at an accredited institution.^[11] Through these preprofessional programs Chandler had found a quick and inexpensive means of making William and Mary’s limited curriculum and resources attractive to a larger number of students.

Chandler’s emphasis on growth and on vocationalism troubled some loyal alumni. One was Robert M. Hughes, who in 1922 cautioned against “calling the College a university, or endeavoring to teach the highly technical subjects offered in a university, such as architecture or engineering. I would rather see a first-class college of respectable but not great numbers than a one-horse university.”^[12] Although Chandler did not wish to adopt the term university for William and Mary, he obviously did not share Hughes’s qualms about the College’s growth. Under his leadership expansion of curriculum and programs continued apace.

The changes in the curriculum improved William and Mary’s attractiveness to prospective students. So did its acceptance by the national accreditation organizations. In January 1918 the College applied for membership in the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, but it was not admitted until the fall of 1921, after it had begun to broaden its curriculum and enlarge its faculty. The next year William and Mary was accredited by the Association of American Colleges and by the Association of American Universities. A few years later, in 1927, the American Association of University Women admitted William and Mary to membership.^[13] Unquestion ably, such recognition increased the College’s prestige.

Education and Business

One form of vocationalism, the training of teachers, had long been a central feature of William and Mary’s program. That role was made explicit by the subheading, “Virginia State College for Teachers,” that appeared under the College’s name on the cover of each summer session catalogue from 1920 through 1923. Throughout the 1920s a large proportion of William and Mary students still entered the teaching profession. This reached a peak of nearly 77 percent of the graduates in 1924, although it dropped off to 52 percent by 1926 and continued to decline thereafter. Undoubtedly, some graduates regarded teaching as only a temporary vocation. Many students—some 30 percent of those enrolled at the College in the early 1920s—were recipients of one of the state scholarships offered by the College to those willing to sign a pledge that they would teach for two years in the public schools of Virginia after graduation. Although William and Mary began to shed its identity as primarily a teacher-training institution during the 1920s (as a result of the expansion of the curriculum into other areas and the dramatic increase in the size of the student body), professional education continued to be an important part of William and Mary’s program.^[14]

Until 1922 students could obtain a Normal Professional Certificate upon completing sixty-three credit hours of the required work towards either the bachelor of arts or the bachelor of science degree, including five courses in Education. This allowed one to teach in elementary school or in the first two years of high school. A State Collegiate Professional Certificate, which allowed one to teach in any public school, required a bachelor’s degree and not less than nineteen credits in Education. In 1922 the program was reorganized so that only juniors and seniors, students who had completed sixty hours of college work (including one introductory course in Education), could enroll in the professional Education courses. To obtain the Collegiate Professional Certificate one had to have a minor in Education, but a major in Education was not allowed. One purpose of the change was to eliminate the two-year, normal school, teacher-training program from the College (although students could still obtain the Normal Professional Certificate by taking Education courses in the third year) and to place greater emphasis on the training of high school teachers and principals. Significantly, by the school year 1926–27, about 22 percent of the division superintendents in Virginia, and nearly 33 percent of the principals of accredited high schools, had received their training at William and Mary.^[15]

In recognition of the significance of Education in the mission of the College, in 1927 the department was retitled the School of Education, and Kremer J. Hoke was named dean (this was in addition to his other duties as dean of the College). One of the concerns of the School of Education was to improve the opportunities for supervised practice teaching by its students. Beginning in 1894, the College had operated the Mattey School in Williamsburg for that purpose. Built in 1870, the Mattey School was owned jointly by the College and the Williamsburg school system. It was located at the north end of the Palace Green. In 1920 Williamsburg built a high school for white students in front of the Mattey School, and the College entered into another agreement to use the new school for observation and practice purposes.^[16]

Within a few years the facilities in Williamsburg for supervised teacher training had become “totally inadequate,” and the College proposed that a new, larger school building be erected. An opportunity to do just that arose in 1928 as a result of the interest of Goodwin and the Williamsburg Holding Corporation (Colonial Williamsburg) in acquiring the site of the Governor’s Palace, on which the old Mattey School and the Williamsburg High School were located. William and Mary then applied for, and subsequently received, a grant from the General Education Board to help pay for a new Williamsburg school. By early 1929 agreements were worked out between the College, the city of Williamsburg, and Colonial Williamsburg. As a result, the old school properties were sold to Colonial Williamsburg, and a new school, Matthew Whaley, which was owned jointly by the city and the College, was erected on Scotland Street at the north end of Nassau Street. Completed in 1930, it provided a modern laboratory school for William and Mary students and in so doing helped to maintain the continuing significance of teacher training at the College.^[17]

Another curriculum development related to teacher training was the introduction of a program in library science in 1931. In 1927 the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools adopted standards for secondary school libraries. To meet these, school librarians would have to be properly educated. As there were then no library schools in Virginia, Chandler jumped at the opportunity to provide yet another educational service. In the summer of 1929, William and Mary offered a few courses in library science. Subsequently, the College developed plans for a full program, which Chandler hoped to get started by the fall of 1930. In the spring of 1930, he applied to the General Education Board for a $39,000 grant to support the program for an initial five-year period. This was unsuccessful, but a year later the General Education Board approved a revised request for $33,200, provided the College was willing to assume full support for the program after four years. As a result, a library science department was created, and courses were begun in the fall of 1931.^[18]

The primary objective of the department was to train school librarians. Matthew Whaley served as a laboratory school here just as it did for teachers. Students could major or minor in library science, but they were warned that “physical vigor and strong eyesight capable of sustaining long continuous reading” were necessary and “a moderate proficiency in the use of the typewriter” was required.^[19] By 1934 the Southern Association had accredited the program, but the American Library Association, which raised questions about the acting director’s qualifications to teach school librarians, withheld its approval until 1938.^[20] Funding the program proved to be more difficult than had been anticipated. At the end of the four-year grant from the General Education Board, the College lacked the funds to keep it going. The program survived only because of the willingness of the Board to extend its support for two more years. Although William and Mary’s library science program was the only one of its sort in Virginia, it failed to attract many students. Fifteen students with a major in library science were graduated in 1933, but the total fell to a low of four in 1937. Thereafter the number increased considerably, but library science remained a marginal operation that was finally abolished in 1948.^[21]

Another of Chandler’s early objectives, one consistent with his interest in vocational education, was to introduce business administration as a field of study. Moving quickly, he announced at his first meeting with the William and Mary faculty on September 16, 1919, that such a program would begin with the 1919–20 session. Chandler believed that the training of prospective businessmen should be within the framework of a liberal education leading to a bachelor of arts or a bachelor of science degree. In his proposed program, about half of the courses were to be in liberal arts, with the remainder in commerce, business administration, and accountancy. Three courses were offered during the fall semester of 1919: general economics, the history of commerce and industry, and principles of accounting.^[22]

Although a program in business got under way during Chandler’s first year, it was initially quite limited. During the first two or three years, in fact, there was confusion over just what had been established. The catalogue for the 1919–20 session (which was published in April 1920) used the title, “The School of Finance and Business Administration.” In 1920–21 there was no reference to a “School,” and business courses were simply listed under “Economics”; the next year they appeared under “Economics and Business Administration.” Thereafter, from 1922 to its abolition in 1935, the program was run by the “School of Economics and Business Administration.”^[23] The first director of the program was Frederick Juchhoff, who came to William and Mary in 1919 as a professor of economics and accountancy. During the 1922–23 session, Oscar Lane Shewmake, an attorney and former member of the Board of Visitors, was dean of the school.^[24] From 1923 until his death in 1929, that position was held by William Angus Hamilton, a professor of jurisprudence.

Despite its rather pretentious identification as a “School,” the business faculty was drawn from professors with appointments in economics and in jurisprudence, as well as in business or accounting. Consistent with Chandler’s notion that business training should be within the framework of a liberal arts program, the courses, which included ones in economics as well as in such subjects as industrial management, merchandising, accountancy, and business law, were part of a small, interconnected curriculum. By the middle of the 1920s, however, the vocationalist approach had gained ground with many faculty. At the meeting of February 7, 1925, a majority of the faculty voted to request that the Board of Visitors create a number of specialized degrees, including bachelors of business administration, of physical education, and of home economics. This motion was passed over the opposition of a degree committee consisting of Dean Hoke and Professor J. Lesslie Hall. They argued that sufficient specialization was possible within the existing two bachelor’s degrees, and that William and Mary should continue as a liberal arts institution. Ultimately their views prevailed, for the Board refused to approve the new degrees.^[25] Nevertheless, the program in business continued as such during Chandler’s presidency.

The Marshall-Wythe School: Citizenship and the Law

Among the many developments in William and Mary’s educational program in the 1920s, Chandler was probably most passionately committed to the creation of the Marshall-Wythe School of Government and Citizenship. Here he saw a means by which William and Mary could relate names and ideals from its past to the demands of the present. Such a school could serve the nation by educating its students in the art of intelligent citizenship. The conservative objectives of the school’s promoters, who may have been influenced by the postwar Red Scare, were evident from the start. A pamphlet issued by fund-raiser Earl B. Thomas in May 1920 asserted that the inculcation of “safe and sane views of the form of American government is now conceded to be one of the most important functions of our education. The intelligent exercise of American citizenship, as a patriotic duty, must be regarded hereafter as a subject of major importance in our colleges.”^[26] In the fund-raising campaign that began in 1920, the goal was to raise $200,000 to endow the Marshall-Wythe School; in 1924 that was increased to $300,000 with another $200,000 for a building.”^[27]

One of the alumni most active in the College’s fund-raising efforts, and a staunch promoter of the school, was Robert M. Hughes. It was Hughes who prevailed upon former New York judge, Alton B. Parker, the defeated presidential candidate of the Democratic Party in 1904, and then a practicing attorney in New York, to serve as chairman of a committee to help guide the development of the Marshall-Wythe School. In a letter to Parker, Hughes made his objectives clear: “Personally, I believe in the Constitution as our fathers drew it. … I think the greatest danger to-day is the thirst for tinkering with it. … The best way to check that tendency is to educate the young, when embryo lawyers or embryo citizens, to teach them its meaning, and its evolution from older principles of government.”^[28] The immediate objective of the early fund-raising was to endow two chairs, the John Marshall Chair of Constitutional History and Law and the George Wythe Chair of Governmental and International Law. The holder of the first chair would teach a course in the historical development of government to the present; the holder of the second would deal with international relations and comparative government. The hope was to develop courses that would be required of all William and Mary students.^[29]

Despite the limited success of the fund-raising campaign, Chandler, supported by the Board of Visitors, took steps to open the school at the beginning of the spring semester of the 1921–22 session. To fill the John Marshall Chair, Chandler turned to a distinguished Virginia lawyer, John Garland Pollard. Born in King and Queen County in 1871, Pollard was a graduate of Columbian College (later named George Washington University). He had been a member of the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1901–1902, the attorney general of Virginia from 1913 to 1917, and a member of the Federal Trade Commission from 1920 to 1921. He was also well known for his annotated edition of the Code of Virginia.^[30] In December 1921 Pollard accepted Chandler’s offer, and agreed to teach four courses in government and law when the semester began on February 1, 1922.^[31]

The Marshall-Wythe School was formally opened with ceremonies held on January 14, 1922, at which Judge Parker was the principal speaker. In attendance were Governor Davis, Governor-elect E. Lee Trinkle, and a delegation from the General Assembly.^[32] The school’s stated purpose was “to train students for political leadership and public service by giving them an adequate course in the principles underlying successful civil government and in the history of government.”^[33] In practice, the school was a modest, largely paper organization, consisting of Pollard and three others: Richard L. Morton, a professor of history and government; William Angus Hamilton, a professor of jurisprudence; and Oscar L. Shewmake, a professor of government and law.^[34] It provided a home for the newly reinstituted courses in law, but otherwise the school merely collected under a new title a number of professors and courses taught in other departments. Created at a time when departmental organization was beginning to play an ever more significant role at the College, the Marshall-Wythe School had problems concerning its identity and function from the start, despite the lofty rhetoric surrounding its beginnings.

Although he was not originally so listed, Pollard was soon given the title of dean, and until May 1929, when he resigned to enter the gubernatorial race, he was clearly the school’s commanding presence. In his view, its function was to instruct students in proper values, not to be a place of freethinking, independent research. His course in Virginia government and citizenship (Government 201) was required of all freshmen from Virginia (others could substitute a different government course). Pollard took the citizenship training and public service objectives seriously. In 1922 he and the members of his Government 201 class drew up a fourteen-point “William and Mary Citizenship Creed,” as “a summary of our conception of our duties as citizens to the governments under which we live.”^[35] The statement, however admirable, was a graphic reminder of the missionary-like impulses that guided Pollard, Chandler, and other supporters of the school. These aspects were reinforced by the generous grant from James G. Cutler in the fall of 1926. The Cutler Fund not only endowed the John Marshall professorship; it also paid for an annual lecture on the Constitution, and for two twenty-five-dollar prizes (originally in gold coin) to the senior man and senior woman who wrote the best essays on some aspect of the Constitution. In 1927 the Cutler essay became a degree requirement, and all seniors had to write and submit an essay on some aspect of the Constitution of the United States.^[36]

Although it had been inaugurated with considerable fanfare and the best of intentions, the Marshall-Wythe School never attained the significance its original supporters had envisaged. By the early 1930s, after the departure of Pollard and the death of Chandler, it had lost its strongest champions. Its role in the educational mission of the College, less than clear from the start, became ever harder to justify. Increasingly irrelevant, it nevertheless continued, on paper at least, for another ten years.

One source of confusion regarding the Marshall-Wythe School concerned its connection to the study of law at William and Mary. Although the College boasted of having organized the first law school in America, it had been in suspension since the Civil War. Between then and 1920, an occasional course in law was taught and three law degrees were granted, but there was no program as such. In 1920 Chandler, with the strong backing of Robert M. Hughes and others, began the effort to revive the systematic study of law. In a bulletin published in August 1920, William and Mary announced its intention to reestablish a law program. For the session of 1920–21, only the first year of such courses was to be offered. During the next year, the catalogue even referred to a “School of Law,” but, as was often the case, the term was used loosely.^[37]

Despite these initial efforts, just what was then being attempted was not entirely clear. At first, professors of economics, history, and government were listed as the faculty for most of the courses, although in January 1921, William Angus Hamilton, a person with appropriate legal training, was added to the faculty. Subsequently, the College claimed that the formal reestablishment of the school of law occurred on January 14, 1922, the date of the inauguration of the Marshall-Wythe School. At the time it was not so obvious. Writing to Earl B. Thomas on January 21, 1922, Chandler pointed out that the Marshall-Wythe School was not a school of law and that “a School of Law has never been reestablished, and may never be reestablished.”^[38] William and Mary then offered only two years of law. But in April 1922 a new catalogue was published that included a description of a proposed three-year program leading to a “Bachelor of Law” degree under the heading “The School of Law.” However, the Board of Visitors did not actually agree to the addition of a third year of law (to begin in the 1923–24 session) until June 7, 1922. By then Chandler claimed that his only hesitation was due to the limited size of the law library. Thus, a full law program, at least on paper, was under way by 1923. In that year the name was changed to the “School of Jurisprudence.” For the next two decades, it remained a division of the Marshall-Wythe School.^[39]

Chandler, Pollard, and others believed that the teaching of law at William and Mary should be viewed broadly within the context of a liberal arts program and not simply as a means of training prospective lawyers. As a later dean, Theodore S. Cox, explained, “The purpose [was] … to permit properly trained students to study law in conjunction with other studies, rather than confine the teaching of law only to those who are training for the profession.”^[40] Indeed, Pollard did not believe that the state would support a second law school (one in addition to the University of Virginia) and had initially opposed purely professional training until the College could get sufficient private endowment to run a program that would be recognized by national associations.^[41] Law courses were open to juniors and seniors, and students could even elect law as one of their majors. But, unlike some institutions, William and Mary made the possession of a bachelor’s degree a prerequisite for its law degree. Admission to the School of Jurisprudence as a degree candidate required either a bachelor’s degree or three years work towards such a degree. Students without the bachelor of arts degree could receive it after one year of law courses and then go on to complete the law degree.

For several decades the School of Jurisprudence struggled on with few students, a small faculty, and limited facilities. As the ambitious goals of the endowment campaign had not been realized, it led a perilous financial existence, being dependent upon student tuition and state appropriations. After its reestablishment the school awarded its first bachelor of law (B.L.) degree in the summer of 1924. Three more had been earned by the end of the decade, and thirteen by 1935. The pace picked up a bit after that, but by the end of 1939, nearly two decades after the program began, only twenty-eight students had earned law degrees at William and Mary. During this period enrollments in law classes usually ranged between forty and seventy students each semester, but many were undergraduates who were not preparing for a career in law.^[42]

The law faculty remained equally modest in size for many years. During the 1921–22 session, it consisted of only Professors Hamilton and Shewmake, who were joined by Pollard in January 1922. All had other teaching responsibilities. Shewmake left in 1923, and Hamilton died in March of 1929. A few others were added during the 1920s. One was Peter Paul Peebles, the recipient in 1924 of the first modern law degree at William and Mary. A notable addition in 1927 was Dudley W. Woodbridge, a man of strong scholarly credentials, who spent the remainder of his career at William and Mary and did much to keep the law school in operation. After Pollard left William and Mary in 1929, there was neither a dean of the Marshall-Wythe School nor a head of the School of Jurisprudence. The next year Chandler tried to hire James M. Landis of the Harvard Law School to become “head” of the school. The effort failed, but in Theodore Sullivan Cox, who was appointed in 1930, he found an able new professor. Two years later Cox was made the first dean of the School of Jurisprudence, and, in the face of numerous obstacles, he served the school well for more than a decade.^[43]

In 1932 the College also appointed its first law librarian, John Latane Lewis. It was an important addition, for the school’s most conspicuous limitation in regard to facilities was the weakness of the library. In 1927 Earl Gregg Swem, the College librarian, had reported that the law library consisted of only 4,450 volumes, and that included a collection it was about to receive. At least 7,500 volumes were then needed to meet the minimum standards set by the Association of American Law Schools, and to reach this size $7,500 or more would have to be spent over the next five years. To make matters worse, in 1928 Pollard estimated that more than half of the materials in the law library were obsolete. He believed that at least $10,000 was needed. But Chandler was not dismayed, and he promised that the money would be obtained, $5,000 before March 1, 1929, and the remainder about a year later.^[44] The development of the library progressed slowly. In 1931 there were some 6,500 volumes located in new quarters on the third floor of the college library. By 1933 it had grown enough so the School of Jurisprudence achieved one of its first major objectives, approval by the American Bar Association.^[45] Much more remained to be done, especially gaining accreditation by the Association of American Law Schools. This was finally granted in 1936.^[46] For the time being, at least, the school’s existence seemed to be assured, despite its obvious limitations.

Serving the Broader Community

Chandler’s program initiatives were not limited to the curriculum reforms and new schools at the College in Williamsburg. In July 1919, shortly after assuming office, he asserted that William and Mary had a responsibility to reach out to the broader community.^[47] He took this idea seriously. As early as September 1919, he arranged to have extension courses taught in Newport News, Norfolk, and Richmond. In offering such courses the College’s stated aims were to provide opportunities for a liberal education for people who had to continue their regular work, to promote better citizenship by helping people understand American ideals, to provide opportunities for teachers to advance professionally or renew their certificates, to provide technical training for those preparing for the state examinations in accountancy and law, and to offer courses in finance and commerce that would help business people meet their current problems.^[48] The response to these courses, judged by enrollments, seemed to justify Chandler’s belief that there was an urgent demand for such study. More than two hundred individuals registered for one or more courses in the three localities, the largest number in Newport News. Courses were taught in the evening in accounting, law, psychology, history, government, Education, English, Spanish, and transporta tion. The highest enrollments were in accounting and law. This initial success prompted Chandler to reach farther afield, and during the 1920–21 session, exten sion courses were offered also in Suffolk, Petersburg, and Portsmouth.^[49]

The first director of the extension program was Frederick Juchhoff, who had come to William and Mary in September 1919 as a professor of economics and accountancy.^[50] In the spring of 1920, Chandler offered the position, and a professorship in Education, to William T. Hodges. A 1902 William and Mary graduate with a master of arts degree from Columbia University, Hodges had been superintendent of schools in Arlington, Virginia, from 1909 to 1916 and since then state superintendent of rural education. As chairman of the alumni’s Improvement Fund campaign, he was also an active supporter of Chandler’s money-raising venture. Hodges accepted the offer and began his work in September 1920.^[51] During the next few years, enrollments in extension courses steadily increased. In the fall of 1922, there were 352 students in Norfolk, 250 in Richmond, 167 in Newport News and Hampton, and 15 in Gloucester. Within a few years, courses were being offered in eleven different communities, although most of the students were in Norfolk, Richmond, or Newport News.^[52] Chandler took pride in William and Mary’s extension program, which he claimed was the first offered by an institution in Virginia. He also delighted in the ever-increasing enrollments and would regularly include the totals from the extension, as well as the summer session, in his annual reports and in the catalogue. Extension enrollments reached a peak of 1,980 during the 1931–32 session. In that same year, 1,682 students were enrolled at the College in Williamsburg (approximately eight times the size of the student body during Tyler’s later years). By adding 1,054 summer session and 1,980 extension students, he could boast of an impressive total enrollment of 4,716.^[53] This, he believed, was service to the citizens of the state that deserved recognition.

The extension program greatly increased William and Mary’s visibility, and it obviously was appreciated by many people in Richmond and in Tidewater, Virginia, who were unable or did not desire to attend college full-time. This may have helped Chandler and the College to win friends and gain some support in the state legislature. But it was done at a cost. At first all the courses were staffed by regular faculty members, who had to make tiring trips away from Williamsburg two or three times a week to teach classes in the late afternoon or evening.^[54] In February 1925 the Flat Hat published an editorial, “What Price Extension?” that was highly critical of the practice. The advantages of the extension courses, it argued, did not justify the harm done to faculty and students at the College. The faculty “return to the college tired not only in mind but frequently in body. … They are not permitted time for research and study on courses which they are to teach.” The students in turn were deprived of the best instruction; they were not getting what they had paid for.^[55] Coming at a time when the Flat Hat rarely questioned administrative practices, this was an unusually strong editorial. Upset by such a challenge, Chandler let the editor, M. Carl Andrews, know of his displeasure. But many faculty members also told the editor, off the record, that “the editorial was just what they needed,” and it may have been a factor in encouraging Hodges to hire an increasing number of local part-time people to teach some of the extension courses.^[56]

In addition to the ordinary extension courses, Chandler also extended William and Mary’s reach by assuming control of the Richmond School of Social Work and Public Health. Founded in 1917 at the request of a number of Richmond residents, the school was a small, private operation run by Henry H. Hibbs, Jr.^[57] Shortly after William and Mary began to offer extension courses in Richmond, Hibbs asked Chandler, who was a member of the board of trustees of the Richmond school, about the possibility of their two institutions entering into some sort of an affiliation. Chandler jumped at the chance. By the spring of 1920, they had worked out an arrangement whereby, beginning in the fall of 1920, courses taken at the Richmond school could be used to count towards a bachelor of arts or bachelor of science degree at William and Mary, while the College’s extension division in Richmond would teach economics, government, sociology, and other preprofessional courses for students in the Richmond school. Students seeking a bachelor of science degree in social work would be allowed to do three years at William and Mary in Williamsburg and then complete their senior year in Richmond. But William and Mary assumed no financial responsibility for the Richmond school, which remained an independent, privately financed institution.^[58]

Beginning in 1922 the directors of the Richmond school began to confer with Chandler about the possibility of William and Mary assuming direct control of their institution. In June 1924 Chandler finally agreed to make such a recommendation to the Board of Visitors provided “the school acquired a permanent building in a good central neighborhood.” The Board agreed and on October 27, 1924, made such an offer. As the result of a successful fund drive the directors of the Richmond school were able to purchase the Saunders-Willard House at 827 West Franklin Street. A formal agreement between the two institutions was signed on March 25, 1925, with William and Mary’s control to begin on July 1, 1925.^[59]

Thereafter, the Richmond Division of the College of William and Mary included, under Hibbs’s direction, both the evening extension program and the School of Social Work and Public Health. Although the number of students enrolled in the latter steadily increased (from around 50 in 1925–26 to 303 in 1932–33), for many years it remained a small operation. Its program was augmented by the addition of a School of Art in 1928 and a School of Distributive Education (to train people for executive positions in mercantile enterprises) in 1937. But the association between the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg and its Richmond Division remained a troubled one. One problem was financial. Although it had become a branch of William and Mary, the Richmond Division had to operate entirely without state funds. Its financial limitations, in turn, adversely affected the quality of its institutional resources and academic program. In addition, the cooperative degree programs never attracted the number of students that had been expected. By the mid-1930s an increasing number of people began to ask if the College’s Richmond connection might not be more of a liability than an asset.^[60]

William and Mary’s extension program developed differently in Norfolk, then the state’s second largest urban area. Unlike Richmond, it had no educational institutions at the college level. The extension courses which the College began to offer in September 1919 filled a real need and enjoyed an increasing popularity in the 1920s. But many people in Norfolk believed that their city needed more than part-time evening classes. In May 1929 Dean Hoke suggested to Chandler that the time had come to establish “a branch of the College of William and Mary in Norfolk on a more permanent and collegiate basis than our work is at present.” Hoke was not specific as to details, but it was clear that he saw the need for an enlarged program with classes in the afternoon as well as the evening. Chandler had previously discussed with Robert M. Hughes the idea of setting up a two-year college in Norfolk, and he now suggested it be considered again.^[61] The idea was strongly supported by A. H. Foreman, a member of the Board of Visitors from Norfolk, and other officials and citizens of the city.^[62] The city of Norfolk then proposed deeding an abandoned grammar school building to William and Mary as a site for the new two-year college. In June 1930 the Board of Visitors accepted the offer and appointed a committee composed of Foreman, Chandler, and three Norfolk citizens to take charge of the organization of the Norfolk Division. William and Mary then spent some $30,000 to renovate the building and another $50,000 to purchase twelve acres of adjoining land for future development. Classes began on September 29, 1930.^[63]

The new program offered only daytime classes taught from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and was separate from and in addition to the extension courses. The Norfolk Division began its first semester with 160 students, and during the next few years the number steadily increased. Some students only sought two years of college, but an increasing number would begin their college education in Norfolk and then transfer to William and Mary in Williamsburg, or to other colleges, for their last two years. In 1931 the College began a cooperative arrangement with Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI) in conjunction with the Norfolk Division. Under the agreement VPI provided three full-time faculty to teach the courses included in the first two years of VPI’s engineering program. Now students at Norfolk could begin a technical education as well as one in liberal arts. Those completing the pre-engineering program would be eligible to transfer to VPI for their junior and senior years. In the fall of 1932, 97 of the 432 students registered in the Norfolk Division were taking VPI engineering work from VPI faculty.^[64]

To staff the Norfolk Division new full-time faculty were hired, many of whom also taught extension courses. The division also began to develop its own administration. In August 1930 Chandler appointed H. Edgar Timmerman as director and assistant professor of history. After overseeing the Norfolk Division’s initial two years, he was granted a leave of absence in 1932 to work on his doctorate.^[65] Timmerman was replaced by Edward M. Gwathmey, a professor of English at William and Mary, but he resigned after less than one semester to assume the presidency of Converse College in South Carolina. Finally, Chandler turned to William T. Hodges, who since 1928 had been both the director of the extension program and dean of men at the College. On January 1, 1933, Hodges took over as a dean (rather than as a director), and for nearly a decade he played an important, if sometimes controversial, role in the development of the Norfolk Division.^[66] It, like the Richmond Division, visibly and meaningfully expanded the influence of William and Mary. But, as Chandler’s successors were to discover, the Norfolk Division also created serious problems for the College in Williamsburg.

In a little over a decade Chandler had redefined and significantly broadened William and Mary’s educational mission. These changes were equal to, if not more important than, the rebuilding and expansion of the physical plant. Within the space of a few years, the College had established a presence well beyond the local campus through extension courses in several eastern Virginia communities and through separate full-time divisions in Richmond and Norfolk. The developments in Williamsburg were equally significant. Most notably, Chandler was responsible for dramatically increasing the size of the student body. In the process William and Mary did not abandon its commitment to the liberal arts, but it significantly expanded its vocational domain beyond its traditional responsibility to train teachers. Thus, it had added preprofessional programs in several disciplines, in addition to programs in library science, business, and law.

Such changes certainly broadened the College’s appeal; but they raised serious questions about its identity. By 1927 four new “Schools” had been created. To some this might have implied a movement toward university status. In reality, the term “School” was misleading. Business Administration, Education, and the Marshall-Wythe School were more departments than schools, as they had no separate budgets, degrees, or (except for Education) faculty. Nor did they enjoy separate professional accreditation. Although it was the smallest of the four, jurisprudence came closer to being a true school in that it had its own degree and, eventually, accreditation by professional organizations. Still, by the 1930s the creation of the schools, the expansion of technical and vocational programs, and the existence of separate divisions in Richmond and Norfolk had clouded the traditional image of William and Mary. What was the mission of the College? How did it best serve the people of the state and nation? Had a proper balance been struck between a liberal arts curriculum and the technical and vocational subjects? Had Chandler developed an institution that attempted to be all things to all people? No one could doubt that Chandler’s achievements in both buildings and programs were significant, but troublesome questions remained.