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<ead>
<eadheader langencoding="ISO639-2"
findaidstatus="unverified-partial-draft"
audience="internal">
<eadid>ru.0024</eadid>
<filedesc>
<titlestmt>
<titleproper
encodinganalog="245$a">Inventory of James
Rowland Angell presidential records,
<date>1921-1937</date><num>Record Unit
24</num></titleproper>
</titlestmt>
<publicationstmt>
<publisher>Manuscripts and Archives, Yale
University Library</publisher>
<address>
<addressline><emph render="underline">Yale
University Archives</emph></addressline>
<addressline><emph render="underline">Yale
Record Group 2-A</emph></addressline>
<addressline><emph
render="underline">Records of the
president's office</emph></addressline>
<addressline>New Haven,
Connecticut</addressline>
</address>
<date normal="1998-01-01"
type="copyright">Copyright © 1998, Yale
University Library</date>
</publicationstmt>
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<profiledesc>
<langusage>Finding aid written in
<language>English.</language>
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<archdesc level="otherlevel">
<did>
<origination>
<corpname>Yale University. President's
Office.</corpname>
</origination>
<unittitle>James Rowland Angell presidential
records, <unitdate>1921-1937</unitdate>
</unittitle>
<physdesc>
<extent>84.25 linear ft.</extent>
</physdesc>
<abstract>The records consist of
correspondence, annual reports, Memoranda,
and subject files documenting Angell's
activities as president of Yale University.
The records contain substantive
documentation on virtually every aspect of
the University's administration, its
schools, departments, and other major units.
The files pertaining to the founding of the
School of Nursing, The Institute of Human
Relations, and the residential colleges are
particularly significant.</abstract>
</did>
<bioghist>
<p>James Rowland Angell was born on May 8,
1869 in Burlington, Vermont. He attended the
University of Michigan (B.A., 1890; M.A.,
1891), Harvard (M.A., 1892) and the
University of Berlin. From 1893-1919 Angell
was a professor of psychology at the
University of Chicago and served as acting
president from 1918-1919. In 1921 he
resigned as president of the Carnegie
Corporation to accept the presidency of Yale
University, a position he held until 1937.
As president of Yale, Angell instituted a
major reorganization of the undergraduate
curriculum, brought in new faculty, expanded
the Graduate School, and increased Yale's
stature as a national center of higher
education.</p>
<p>Major achievements of his administration
included the founding of the Yale School of
Nursing (1923); the organization of the
Institute of Psychology (1924), which was
expanded into the Institute of Human
Relations (1929); and the adoption of a
residential college plan for undergraduates.
Angell died in Hamden, Connecticut on March
4, 1949.</p>
</bioghist>
<admininfo>
<prefercite>
<p>James Rowland Angell presidential
records, (RU 24). Manuscripts and Archives,
Yale University Library.</p>
</prefercite>
</admininfo>
<odd>
<p>Forms part of Yale Record Group 2-A (YRG
2-A), Records of the president's Office.</p>
<address>
<addressline>Manuscripts &
Archives</addressline>
<addressline>Sterling Memorial
Library</addressline>
<addressline>P.O. Box 208240</addressline>
<addressline>New Haven, CT
06520-8420</addressline>
</address>
</odd>
<bioghist>
<p><emph render="bold">ANGELL,</emph> James
Rowland, university president, was born in
Burlington, Vt., May 8, 1869, son of James
Burrill and Sarah Swope (Caswell) Angell and
a descendant of Thomas Angell, who came to
America from England with Roger Williams
(q.v.) in 1631 and settled in Providence,
R.I. From Thomas and his wife, Alice Ashton,
the descent was through John and Ruth Field,
Thomas and Sarah Drown, Jeremiah and Mary
Mathewson, Andrew and Tabitha Harris,
Charles and Olive Aldrich, and Andrew and
Amey Aldrich, the grandparents of James R.
Angell. His father (q.v.) was successively
professor at Brown University, editor of the
Providence Journal, president of the
universities of Vermont and Michigan, and
U.S. minister to China and Turkey. His
mother was a daughter of Alexis Caswell
(q.v.), president of Brown University. James
R. Angell received an A.B. degree at the
University of Michigan in 1890 and an A.M.
degree in the following year in psychology,
economics and American history. After taking
a second master's degree in 1892 at Harvard
University, where he came under the
influence of William James (q.v.) in his
advanced studies in psychology, he continued
postgraduate work in Europe, chiedy at the
universities of Berlin and Hatle, also
studying in Vienna, Paris and Leipzig. In
1893 he went to the University of Minnesota
as instructor in philosophy. A year later he
joined John Dewey (q.v.) at the University
of Chicago as assistant professor of
philosophy and psychology, and in 1905
became full professor and head of a new
special department of psychology. For
fourteen years he took little part in
general faculty activities, devoting his
time throughout that period almost solely to
psychology. His administrative work began in
1908 when he accepted the office of dean of
the senior colleges at the University of
Chicago. In 1911 he became dean of the
faculties, a post which entailed various
responsible executive functions relating to
problems of undergraduate scholarship and
activities and conferences thereon with
faculty colleagues. In 1914 he was selected
as American exchange professor at the
Sorbonne, Paris, and in 1915 as special
lecturer on psychology at Columbia
University. Later he spoke at many colleges
and universities. During the First World War
his services were enlisted by the U.S.
government as a member of the preliminary
psychology committee of the Office of the
Surgeon General, U.S. Army, committees of
the Office of the Adjutant General on
classification of personnel and on education
and special training, and as a member of the
National Research Council. The protracted
absence of Harry P. Judson (q.v.), president
of the University of Chicago, led to
Angell's designation as vice-president in
1918 and as such he here the chief
administrative responsibility during the
next year. After the war he continued his
work with the Nation Research Council as its
chairman for one year (1919-20), then became
president of the Carnegie Corporation of New
York. In 1921 he was elected president of
Yale University to succeed Arthur T. Hadley
(q.v.), being the first president of Yale
since 1765 who was not a graduate of that
University. His administration, which
continued until the close of the academic
year 1936-37, when he reached the statutory
retirement age of sixty-eight, was in many
respects the most constructive in Yale's
history. All new buildings were designed a
common architectural pattern, giving the
Yale campus one of the greatest collections
of Gothic architecture in the Western
Hemisphere. During his presidency
thirty-five buildings were erected, many of
them having individual endowments for
maintenance, at an aggregate cost of
$52,000,000; the total endowment increased
from slightly over $25,000,000 to more than
$105,000,000 the work begun by Hadley
co-ordinating the various schools and
departments was continued, and new
facilities and opportunities for study in
various fields were provided. Among the more
important of the new structures were several
erected under provisions of the will of John
W. Sterling (q.v.), including the Sterling
Chemistry Laboratory; Sterling Hall of
Medicine; Sterling Memorial Library, costing
over $5,000,000 and designed to house
5,000,000 volumes; Sterling Tower, for the
Scientific School; and the Sterling Law and
Graduate School quadrangles. Other important
structures erected were new buildings for
the Sage School of Forestry and the Peabody
Museum of Natural History, William L.
Harkness Educational Building a building for
the university Department of Health, the
Raleigh Fitkin Memorial Clinic for Children.
Sheffield Scientific School administration
building, Institute of Human Relations
building, Hall of Graduate Studies, Gallery
of Fine Arts, the Harry Payne Whitney
Memorial Gymnasium, the Charles E. Coxe
Memorial Field Gymnasium, the Divinity
School quadrangles erected with funds given
by the Sterling trustees, John D.
Rockefeller, Jr. (q.v.), and others, and an
imposing Greek colonnade built as a memorial
to Yale men who fell in the First World War.
In 1924 Angell recommended to the board of
trustees a reorganization of the
undergraduate student body which would
provide adequate housing under conditions
resembling those of the Oxford and Cambridge
colleges. The plan remained in abeyance
until 1930, when it was definitely matured
and adopted. Edward S. Harkness agreed to
finance eight units of the program which
came into operation in 1933 when seven
residential colleges, Branford, Calhoun,
Davenport, Johnathan Edwards, Pierson,
Saybrook and Trambull, were put into
service. Two others were added later.
Berkeley in 1934 and Timothy Dwight in 1935.
This change was probably the most
revolutionary in the history of Yale. The
arrangement recognized the social and
educational values inherent in small groups,
giving every undergraduate the opportunity
to benefit by direct social relationship
with his classmates and by frequent contact
with members of the faculty. The colleges
were planned to co-operate with the
undergraduate schools to evolve whatever
combinations of formal and informal
instruction made the work of each
undergraduate most instructive and
effective. Each had its own library, dining
hall, kitchen, common rooms and squash
courts, with accommodations for from 160 to
299 students. Each college had its own
master living in the college, and associated
with him as active fellows ten or twelve
members of the faculty, some residing there
and all having rooms in which to meet
students. At various times during Angell's
administration the Sterling Estate trustees,
in addition to making appropriations for
buildings, created thirty-two professional
chairs for distinguished achievement,
carrying unusually large salaries and the
control of substantial sums for research.
They also provided for a large number of
scholarships and fellowships for advanced
students. The total thus made available for
educational work was nearly $12,000,000. As
a result of considerations which he urged in
1924 and after several years of preparatory
work, a fund of $20,993,918, to be used
exclusively for education purposes, was
raised in 1928 through gifts from over
20,000 graduates and other friends of the
university. One of the largest single
donations to Yale and the last important one
during his administration was a gift of
upwards of $10,000,000 made anonymously in
June, 1937, for the establishment of the
Jane Coffin Childs Memorial dedicated to the
study of cancer. Among the major additions
to and changes in the university structure
not already mentioned were the combination,
in 1923, of the faculties of Yale College,
Sheffield Scientific School, and Common
Freshman Year into a general under-graduate
faculty to deal with such problems as
concerned two or more of these divisions of
the university and, the creation in the same
year, of the School of Nursing. The latter
was one of the first two nurse-training
schools, the other being at Western Reserve
University, established on a parity with
other schools and colleges in a university
and the first to make the completion of a
college course an entrance requirement. In
1924 a gift of Edward S. Harkness made
possible the establishment of a Department
of Drama and a University Theatre, in the
School of Fine Arts, and in the same year a
grant by the Laura Spelman Rockefeller
Memorial was used to establish an Institute
of Psychology. In 1929 through gifts from
various foundations, the Institute of Human
Relations was organized to bring all the
resources of modern science and medicine to
bear on the basic problems of human behavior
and human society. Among the early studies
undertaken under the institute's auspices
were researches in bankruptcy, psychology,
juvenile delinquency, human relations in
industry, and the development of young
children. In 1932 the should of Engineering,
originally founded in 1852 and since 1861 a
part of Sheffield Scientific School, was
again set up as a separate school, offering
both undergraduate and graduate courses.
University athletics were also developed
under Angell by the appointment of a central
directing head so that sports could he
co-ordinated and broadened. A lover of
sports since his own undergraduate days when
he excelled in baseball and tennis, he
sought to interest students in the games
they would play after they left college. A
university, in his view, should produce a
body of men physically fit, a group for whom
sports took a place in a well-rounded life,
not dwarfing other interests. His conception
of education defined it as a companion, in
that it should make a man more at home with
himself and give him something to live with,
besides, as William James said, enabling him
to recognize a good man when he sees one.
After retiring from the presidency of Yale
in 1937, Angell accepted an appointment as
educational counselor to the National
Broadcasting Company, of which he was a
director. He spent his first year with NBC
studying foreign and American systems of
broadcasting to determine the relationship
between radio and education. After going
abroad for a survey, he made recommendations
which guided the company's expanding
activities in the field of public service.
He served as general director of the NBC
Inter-American University of the Air. He was
the director of the Hall of Fame at New York
University from 1944 until his death, and
honorary national president of the
English-Speaking Union, having been its
national president in 1938-46. For many
years he was a member of the General and
International education boards and
Rockefeller Foundation. Besides many
monographs in scientific journals, his
published writings, most of which belonged
to his teaching period as a psychologist,
were <emph render="quoted">Psychology</emph>
(1904), <emph render="quoted">An
Introduction to Psychology</emph> (1918),
and <emph render="quoted">American
Education</emph> (1937). He also edited
<emph render="quoted">Psychological
Monographs.</emph> Angell was a director of
the New York Life Insurance Co. and the RCA
Institute, Inc., and a trustee of the
American Museum of Natural History and the
Museum of Science and Industry, New York
city. He became president in 1947 of the
Roscoe B. Jackson Memorial Laboratory, Bar
Harbor, Me., founded for cancer research by
the family of the former president of the
Hudson Motor Co. Honorary degrees were
awarded him as follows: Litt.D. by Harvard,
Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cincinnati,
Chicago, and McGill (1921), Middlebury
College (1922), Brown University and
Wesleyan College (1923), University of
Illinois (1929), University of Michigan
(1931), Wabash College (1932), New York
University and University of California
(1934), and Ph.D. by Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute in 1924. He was decorated
chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in
1930 and became an officer in 1931; was made
a grand officer of the Order of the Crown of
Italy in 1935, and was awarded a gold medal
by the National Institute of Social Sciences
in 1937. In his honor the James Rowland
Angell Chair in Psychology was endowed at
Yale, and among several other memorials to
him in New Haven was a wing in the Yale
Faculty Club. He was a fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a
member of the British Psychological Society,
American Psychological Association (pros.
1906), American Philosophical Society,
National Academy of Sciences, Society of the
Cincinnati, University Club, Boston,
Graduate Club Association, New Haven, Cosmos
Club, Washington, D.C., Century Club and
Yale Club of New York city, Phi Beta Kappa,
Sigma XI, Delta Kappa Epsilon and Kappa
Delta Pi. His religious affiliation was with
the Congregational church, and in politics
he was an independent. Classical music and
good plays and books were his special
interests, and golf, sailing and tramping
were his favorite recreations. He was
married twice: (1) in Des Moines, Iowa, Dec.
18, 1894, to Marian Isabel, daughter of
Charles Leach Watrous of that city, a
nurseryman, and had two children, James
Watrous and Marian Caswell, who married
William Rockefeller McAlpin; his first wife
died in 1931: (2) in Portland, Me., Aug. 2,
1932, to Katharine (Cramer) Woodman,
daughter of Stuart Warren Cramer of
Charlotte, N.C., and widow of Paul Woodman.
Angell died in Hamden, Conn., Mar. 4,
1949.</p>
<note>
<p><emph render="underline">The National
Cyclopedia of American Biography</emph> Vol.
40, 1955</p>
</note>