iar genius as an administrative
officer was most apparent. When he came, he was forty-two years of age,
and in Professor Hinsdale's words, "brought to his new and responsible
post extended scholarship, familiar acquaintance with society and the
world, administrative experience, a persuasive eloquence, and a
cultivated personality." This urbanity and extraordinary ability as a
speaker won for him from the first a place in the hearts and in the
imaginations of the people of the State. But the most vital
administrative task which faced him was to make Michigan a true
university as distinguished from a college. He had to correlate and
concentrate the various departments, and make them complete by making a
place for effective graduate work. Certain revolutionary measures, such
as the admission of women, the first tentative steps toward free
election of studies, the introduction of a scientific course, had been
instituted by his immediate predecessors; it became his duty to make
them a success.

Almost contemporaneous with Dr. Angell's inauguration as President was
the introduction of the seminar system of teaching, in effect a further
application of the foreign methods; not only should the teacher be an
investigator and searcher after truth, but the student as well; and more
important still, the student should be taught how to carry on original
investigation himself by means of seminar classes where student and
teacher worked together on original problems.

With all these innovations under way, Dr. Angell found many other
opportunities for the introduction of new ideas in education--some of
them as startling and as revolutionary as certain of the earlier
experiments. These included a modification of that traditional course of
classical studies, which can be traced back directly to the Middle Ages.
The establishment of the Latin and Scientific Course, which dropped the
requirement of Greek, was the first step; this was carried further in
1877 by the establishment of an English course in which no classics were
required. The scientific course also underwent further modifications
during this year (1877-78), which was characterized by many changes
regarded then as radical, though they do not strike one so nowadays. A
still more revolutionary step was taken by throwing open more than half
the courses to free election, permitting some students to shorten their
time in college, and enabling others to enrich their course with other