over the country, but of church bodies and the secular press as well. There is still some difference of opinion between the two parties to the controversy as to what are the essential facts in the case. Those recited below are, however, recognized by the official organs of both parties to have been largely influential.

The cause of the difficulty between the board of trust of Vanderbilt University and the general conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South appears to date from the year 1905, when the board of trust rescinded its by-law passed in 1894, by which the bishops were made ex officio members of the board, and instead elected directly five senior bishops. In the same year the board of trust endeavored to procure a new charter. This effort was defeated by the activities of certain officials of the church.

As a result of this disagreement, in 1906 the general conference appointed a commission of five laymen to "determine the relation of Vanderbilt University to the Methodist Episcopal Church South," and to outline the rights of the two bodies with relation to one another.

The commission rendered a report, the principal decisions of which became later the subject of court action. They are thus summarized by the Vanderbilt University Quarterly:1

The commission held (1) that the petitioners who applied for and obtained the charter of Vanderbilt University were not the members of the corporation, but that certain annual conferences were the members thereof; (2) that Mr. Vanderbilt was not the founder, but the founders were the annual conferences represented at the Memphis convention; 2 (3) that since 1898 the general conference, as assignee of the annual conferences, was the sole member of the corporation; (4) that the trustees were and are the agents of the conference; (5) that the bishops were not members of the corporation, but that they were common-law visitors with veto powers.

The general conference of 1910 accepted the report of this commission and endeavored to secure the agreement of the board of trust to its findings. Upon the refusal of the board of trust to concur the general conference proceeded to elect three trustees to fill vacancies existing on the board of trust, thus making a test case of the commission's report. (Previously trustees had been elected by the board and confirmed by the general conference.)

It

The board of trust refused to seat the members thus elected. elected three others to fill the vacancies and rescinded the by-law of 1908, by which the names of trustees elected by the board must be submitted to the general conference for confirmation.

The bishops then filed an original bill in the chancery court of Davidson County, Tenn., for the October term of 1910, praying that

1 Vol. XIV, No. 1, p. 14.

2 The delegates of six annual conferences of the church met at Memphis in January, 1872, and after three days' discussion, adopted nine resolutions, known as the Memphis resolutions, looking to the establishment of a university.

the court enjoin the board of trust from seating the new members. The trustees filed an answer denying the right of the church to elect trustees and the right of the bishops to exercise supervision over the university, and maintaining that the church never had possessed any rights in the university.

The case came to trial in December, 1912, and in February, 1913, the chancellor rendered a decision sustaining the bishops at every point. The trustees immediately took an appeal to the Supreme Court of Tennessee.

While the appeal was pending Mr. Andrew Carnegie offered $1,000,000 for the medical department of the university, $800,000 of it being contingent upon the winning of the suit by the trustees. The bishops, exercising the power they claimed of veto over the action of the trustees, repudiated the gift. The board of trust, however, refused to recognize this action.

The supreme court rendered its decision on March 21, 1914. The principal points made were thus reported in the Nashville Christian Advocate, March 27, 1914:

The members of the committees appointed by the various annual conferences and making up the Memphis convention in 1872 did not meet as representatives of the annual conferences, but as mere individuals.1

Mr. Vanderbilt, and not the annual conferences nor the church, was the founder and original patron of this institution.

The church does not own any part of Vanderbilt University. The only relation is one of "affiliation and influence."

No visitorial powers rest in the college of bishops.

The general conference of 1910, when it undertook to elect members of the board, was not acting within its rights, and its appointees are not entitled to seats in that board. The board of trust in 1910, in rescinding its by-laws and electing three trustees, was not acting within its rights; but the three trustees are entitled to their seats, subject to the general conference.

*

The contract or by-law relation of the general conference would "cease" should the general conference "voluntarily surrender * * or contumaciously refuse to confirm members elected and cease to cooperate with the university." Then the right to representation on the board of trust would cease, "and in that event the board of trust could proceed independently of the general conference to fill vacancies in its own body."

The general conference, meeting in Oklahoma City in May, 1914, adopted unanimously a series of resolutions which rehearsed the history of the controversy between the board of trust and the conference and recommended the appointment of a commission, to be known as the educational commission of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. This commission was instructed, among other things, to reconvey to the patronizing annual conferences such authority over the university as belongs to the general conference; with the recommendation also that the patronizing conterences insti

1 Thus the original incorporators of the university were not the conferences through their representatives, but a group of individuals.

tute legal proceedings to obtain their rights of ownership and control of the university, the expenses of litigation to be paid by the board of education of the general conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South.

The resolutions further provide for the transfer to the general board of education of all the rights of the general conference to confirm persons elected to membership in the board of trust at the university.

The resolutions finally instruct the commission to—

consider and determine the advisability and wisdom of establishing an institution or institutions of higher education of the grade of a university for and on behalf of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, it being the intention of the general conference to, and it does hereby, confer upon the said commission authority to establish and provide for the location, maintenance, and endowment of an institution or institutions of higher education, and to establish and provide for the location, maintenance, and endowment of a school or schools of theology, with full power and authority in this regard to act for and on behalf of this general conference as fully and freely as it acts or would act for itself. * * *. If said commission shall determine to establish such institution or institutions of learning, it shall take such steps as are necessary to incorporate the same, so as to secure to the Methodist Episcopal Church South the ownership and control of the same in perpetuity.

The adoption by the conference of these resolutions was held by the university, and was evidently intended by the conference itself, to be tantamount to severing the relations existing between the university and the general conference.

NEW TENDENCIES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION-THEIR BEARING ON THE ARTS CURRICULUM.

In the summary at the head of the chapter allusion was made to the growing sentiment in favor of the prescribed and carefully coordinated course of study as a foundation both for general culture and for diversified specialization. The recent application of this idea in the field of engineering education, with certain modifications due to the special demands of the profession, is interesting in this connection. The training of the technical specialist, the engineer ready to earn his livelihood by the practice of his profession, is in certain institutions being relegated to the graduate school, or at least to the latter part of the baccalaureate course. The undergraduate course, at least for the earlier years, is devoted to general preparation in the sciences fundamental to all branches of engineering and in other subjects held to be essential to a liberal education. Thus the undergraduate course in engineering loses its strictly professional cast. It becomes one solution of the problem of general education. Perhaps the best known exponent of this tendency is the new engineering department of Johns Hopkins University, established with the aid of the liberal appropriations made by the legislature of Maryland in 1912. During

the first three years of the four-year course the program of studies. is uniform for all students. Specialization in mechanical, civil, clectrical engineering, etc., occurs only in the last year of the course.

An argument in favor of this new policy, together with a defense of engineering education as general liberalizing training, was presented by Dean Gardner C. Anthony, of the Tufts College engineering school, in his address as president of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education at Princeton, in June, 1914. A general undifferentiated course in engineering during the first three years similar to the Johns Hopkins plan has been in operation for several years at Tufts, under Dean Anthony's direction.

Dean Anthony recalled the development of the engineering courses as offshoots of the A. B. courses. While the parent colleges have run to unlimited or only slightly hampered election, the engineering schools have followed the same impulse and have run to minute specialization. The subdivision and insulation of engineering courses has now proceeded altogether too far. Engineering schools must in the future return to somewhere near the point whence they and the arts colleges set out. They must find a program which will educate the man. The development of the specialist may and should be left to the graduate school or to experience.

Moreover, the cultural end may be gained without substantial loss of technical and specialized preparation if a proper coordination and correlation of the work of the various departments is secured. The affinity between pattern making and English, for instance, is not commonly noted by the instructors of these two subjects. It escapes the attention of the lay observer. Nevertheless it exists. In fact, departmental independence and self-sufficiency, departmental blindness to points of contact with other fields of knowledge, are the greatest handicaps to the development of both general and special courses. By close cooperation between the several departments and engineering school as well, the college of arts may become a kind of "composite Mark Hopkins," and a more effective instrument both for general and special training.

RESIGNATIONS AND ELECTIONS.

Among the many changes in executive positions, mention is made here only of those affecting State universities and colleges:

President Arthur II. Wilde, of the University of Arizona, resigned September 1, 1914, and was succeeded by Dr. Rufus B. von Klein Smid, formerly head of the department of psychology at De Pauw University and for the last two years associate superintendent of the Indiana Reformatory.

President James H. Baker, of the University of Colorado, retired on the 1st of January, 1914, and was succeeded by Prof. Livingston Farrand, of the department of anthropology at Columbia University.

Dr. George A. Harter has been succeeded as president of Delaware College by Dr. Samuel C. Mitchell. Dr. Mitchell was at one time president of the University of South Carolina, and at the time of his election was president of the Medical College of Virginia, at Richmond."

Dr. Melvin A. Brannon, dean of the college of liberal arts of the University of North Dakota, has been called to the presidency of the University of Idaho.

President John G. Bowman, of the University of Iowa, resigned in March, 1914, and was succeeded by Acting President Thomas H. MacBride, formerly head of the department of botany in the university.

Chancellor A. A. Kincannon, of the University of Mississippi, who resigned in the spring of 1914, has been succeeded by Dr. Joseph N. Powers, formerly State superintendent of public education of Mississippi.

President Joseph E. Stubbs, of the University of Nevada, died May 27, 1914, and has been succeeded by President Archer W. Hendrick.

Acting President Edward K. Graham, of the University of North Carolina, has been elected to the presidency of that university.

Prof. William Spencer Currell, head of the department of English of Washington and Lee University, has been elected president of the University of South Carolina, to succeed Dr. S. C. Mitchell.

President Robert F. Slagle, of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of South Dakota, was elected in January to the presidency of the University of South Dakota, to succeed President Franklin B. Gault. He has been succeeded in the presidency of the agricultural and mechanical college by Dr. Ellwood C. Perisho, formerly dean of the college of arts and sciences of the University of South Dakota.

President Thomas F. Kane, of the University of Washington, resigned in December, 1913. Prof. Henry Landes, of the department of Latin of the University of Washington, has been made acting president.