| In 1954 Gaylord P. Harnwell, a Haverford graduate, chairman of the
Physics department at Penn and an atomic physicist, was appointed the new university
president and who had procured a decidedly more academic stature than Stassen.
During the mid-forties Harnwell had presided over the California Division of War
Research in San Diego. Harnwell had also been instrumental in reorganizing the
research programs at Penn after the Second World War and had been recognized by
the military with the Medal of Merit for contributions for "war-time" developments
in physics. There would be no better man to represent an academic school to the
Ivy League or as a military research specialist to the government who had been
funding Penn (particularly the Physics department) during the war. Luckily for
the University and its image, Harnwell was a very quick and able worker and even
before his appointment as president, the new physics, mathematics, and astronomy
building was being constructed at a cost of $2,700,000 at 33rd and Walnut Streets.
Prior to the president's arrival, Penn was well on its way to research and academic
status. There was more to enhancing and legitimizing the University's
academic status than constructing new buildings and dismantling questionable football
practices. Penn's administration was becoming conscious of itself in new ways
and how Penn as a university was perceived by the public. The first step in an
internal renovation of academics was to compile a list of components of the University.
The Admissions department was most concerned with academics and their impact on
image. With image in mind, Admissions took the initiative to state candidly, problems
or apparent parts of Penn's current image. A 1966 memo from Director of Admissions,
William Owen expressed as "random thoughts" (hardly random at all), to Don Sheehan
(the director of public relations), avows Penn's newly self-aware identity, and
the intention to cultivate this image through various reforms.
| "As you well know Pennsylvania has had in the past
a visibility for various things: - Strong graduate and professional
schools.
- Wharton School.
- A Haven for Harvard-Yale-Princeton rejects.
- A commuting population.
- A socially oriented rather than intellectually
oriented student life.
- A faculty which lives in the suburbs.
- A city
campus.
The Harnwell era has had to deal with a boot-strap operation
in every facet of collegiate life: - Physical facilities.
- Upbuilding
of faculty.
- Diversification of the student body.
- Revamping of the curriculum.
- Concern for the undergraduate education in the total university complex.
. . . [in reference to some thoughts on premature advertisement of Penn's academic
image] At this juncture, I don't think that Pennsylvania has a uniqueness in undergraduate
education, and therefore, until it does, I don't think we should attempt to puff
up something that doesn't exist."
| To
recruit more academically sound undergraduates, Owens also suggests, that Penn
represent their various programs in the up-coming course catalog with professors
that were either nominees or recipients of the Lindbeck Teaching Award. While
referring to a booklet they were collaborating on for public relations purposes,
Owens cautioned, "Let us not dissipate the impact by getting into non-academic
areas. Our image in extra-curricular life, athletics, and physical plants is being
taken care of on other public relations fronts." Now well into the Harnwell
era, the University was no longer so concerned about its football nemesis, but
it was still struggling with all its might to take its place as peer among the
rest of the academically distinguished Ivy Group. The strategy which emerges for
shedding the image of the "glory years" image and for bolstering its academic
renown and capability came to center upon public relations and recruitment. Public
relations was the way in which Penn could inform the people of Penn's new-found
intellectual aspirations, soon to be available to the best minds of high schools
across the entire nation, not merely Pennsylvania or the northeast. Recruitment
of undergraduates became the way to become a more "unique" or academically distinguished
college and subsequently a more distinguished research university nationally.
"National" remains a key word in this entire scenario because in order to compete
or at least claim to compete with the other Ivy League institutions, Penn had
to become a nationally recognized school rather then merely a regional institution.
The way to this was quite simple in concept but extremely difficult in the actual
context of Penn's specific situation in this period. |