Universities: Big Voice in Little Egypt

In the first six weeks after Delyte Wesley Morris took over as president of decrepit Southern Illinois University in 1948, he gained ten pounds on the banquet circuit. Morris’ nonstop message: S.I.U. would reverse its own sad state and with it the fortunes of the region—a depressed, despairing, violence-ridden enclave known as Little Egypt (or Egypt, after Cairo, Ill., the southernmost city in the state). “Not one of them had the foggiest thought that anything would come of our efforts,” he says—and quietly adds that now “the change has come.”

Morris’ listeners had a right to be skeptical. The S.I.U. campus at Carbondale 16 years ago was a jumble of old, leaking buildings in a lifeless town whose only reason for existence was the fact that the Illinois Central Railroad had chosen to establish a division headquarters there. The school itself was a mediocre state teachers’ college, whose sense of the future was typified by an earlier S.I.U. president whose pride it was to send back money to the legislature from the school’s meager appropriation. Even Morris did not come with a big reputation. The son of an auto insurance salesman, he was born in Little Egypt, was professor of speech at Ohio State when he got the offer to head S.I.U.

Direct Approach. But Morris, 56, is a harddriving, restless fellow. From the start, he aimed for twin goals: improving life in the 31 sprawling counties of Little Egypt, and creating a school of excellence. He believes that “you can have pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake along with a practical, direct approach to society.”

Now, by way of direct approach, teams of specialists from S.I.U.’s department of community development are constantly scouring the region, tempting new industries to settle there. The university’s booming Vocational-Technical Institute offers some 160 courses ranging from cosmetology to court reporting, and 10,000 people take adult-education courses. In an area where only a decade ago only 19% of the population over 25 had attended high school, researchers at S.I.U.’s internationally known education department have strengthened dozens of local public schools by curriculum improvements and new teaching aids. University scientists have tackled such regional problems as water pollution, crop diversification and transportation. Even the S.I.U. symphony is a regional enterprise; half the members are students, and the other half are jobless coal miners and other amateurs.

But in pursuing scholarship, S.I.U. is doing even better. “The progress has been incredible,” says a member of the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. More than 60% of the S.I.U. staff have doctorates, which puts the school among the top 15%-20% in the U.S. For the first time in Little Egypt’s history, students are coming from other parts of the state and from other states. They are attracted by strong faculties in the liberal arts and in such specialties as microbiology and theater design. Among the 260 students from 40 foreign countries, many are taking courses at a novel center for the study of crime and correction that works closely with a model federal prison in nearby Marion. The university press, which published its first book in 1956, is now working on its 125th; among its notable volumes are the Selected Poems of Herman Melville (TIME, May 1) and Modes of Being, by Paul Weiss, Sterling Professor of Philosophy at Yale.

Pacesetter. From 3,000 students only 15 years ago, the school now has 18,200 students (apart from adults), of whom 80% are the first in their families to attend college. The faculty has grown from 250 to 1,150. By the end of the decade, with completion of a second permanent campus now rising out of the wheatfields near Edwardsville, 110 miles northwest of Carbondale, the university’s capacity will reach 36,000 students.

Next month S.I.U. becomes one of the few universities in the U.S. to operate on a four-quarter academic year. Coupled with a 78-hour week of classroom use that runs from 8 a.m. to midnight, officials have squeezed the most out of the educational facilities—and educators. S.I.U. was the first university in the nation deliberately to hire visiting professors who were retired or soon to be retired at other schools. Among dozens of such luminaries have been Harvard Astronomer Harlow Shapley, University of Chicago Theologian Henry Wieman and Designer-Dreamer Buckminster Fuller (TIME Cover, Jan. 10).

Autonomy. The Illinois legislature used to starve S.I.U., but Supersalesman Morris, with the aid of regional politicians and a separate board of trustees appointed by the Governor, got the school a total appropriation of $103 million for 1963-65 (still far less than the favored land-grant University of Illinois). More than 60 new buildings have been completed or are going up in Carbondale alone, including a 17-story dormitory tower. Students have also pitched in to expand S.I.U., though 4,000 of them work to help support themselves. They paid for a $4,500,000 student union, with 16-lane bowling alley, and are now planning to kick in toward a new medical center.

Morris thrives on such displays of university spirit. Along with Little Egypt’s awakening from economic and cultural torpor, it is proof of his promise that S.I.U. “must do more than promote good teaching. We must take the university to the people.”