The Hovde Years , livre ebook

The Hovde Years

The Hovde Years
A Biography of Frederick L. Hovde by Robert W. Topping

Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana 1980
Copyright © 1980 by Purdue Research Foundation, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907. First printing in paperback, 2019. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
Unless permission is granted, this material shall not be copied, reproduced, or coded for reproduction by any electrical, mechanical, or chemical processes, or combinations thereof, now known or later developed.
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-55753-961-8 Epub ISBN: 978-1-55753-960-1 Epdf ISBN: 978-1-55753-959-5
This book was brought back into circulation thanks to the generous support of Purdue University’s Sesquicentennial Committee.
The frontispiece was painted by Ed Blackwell of Audio-Visual Production, Purdue University, from a 1971 Debris photograph.
Specified excerpts from The American College President by Harold W. Stoke. Copyright © by Harold W. Stoke. Reprinted by permission of Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 79-88901 International Standard Book Number 0-931682-04-5
To the more than 94,000 graduates of Purdue University who received diplomas bearing my signature, with the hope that their Purdue experience made their lives more productive, meaningful, and happy.
To the members of the Board of Trustees of Purdue University with whom I worked for twenty-five years—a group of men and women, unsung, often unknown, seemingly unappreciated, who gave their time and substance, their great experience and knowledge, and their complete dedication to the work of making Purdue an institution of excellence.
And to the memory of Priscilla whose love and help was supremely steadfast, particularly in times of stress.
Frederick L. Hovde
Contents
Foreword
Preface
1. Boyhood Years
2. The Minnesota Years
3. The Oxford Experience
4. Career Beginnings
5. World War II
6. Coming to Purdue
7. From 1946 to 1950
8. The Building Years
9. People Around Him
10. Other Interests
11. The Restless Years
Epilog
Appendix
Selected Bibliography
Index
Foreword
When he retired in June of 1971, Frederick L. Hovde had served as president of Purdue for one quarter of the life of the university. This volume, then, is a university history of substantial proportions, as well as the chronicle of a great educator.
Bob Topping has, in my judgment, done a first-rate job of picturing Hovde and the world in which he lived during the various stages of his career, from the early days in a small North Dakota city to the disquieting late 1960s in West Lafayette. The son of a Purdue faculty member, an alumnus, and a long-time Purdue staff member, Bob knows well the university and man about whom he writes.
The book itself covers the career of a brilliant man who made many contributions beyond those specifically connected with Purdue University. But it was commissioned and written to commemorate what Frederick L. Hovde—or “Prexy” as he was known to all of us who worked with him and love him—did to make Purdue one of the nation’s leading state universities.
In February of 1971, just a few months before his retirement, I was honored by being asked to give a tribute to “Prexy” at the University Club-Women’s Club Dinner Dance. As I reread part of that tribute today, it seems to me to make an appropriate foreword to this book, for it summarizes, as best my limited abilities permit, the real contributions Frederick L. Hovde made to Purdue:
What can we really say of this man and the twenty-five years he gave to Purdue? The standard approach, I guess, would be to catalog the growth of the university during his years—its enrollment, its budget, its physical plant, and so on—and credit him with these accomplishments. As a social scientist, I cannot do this because it simply isn’t true. The trend in higher education during the Hovde years at Purdue was such that with any one of a thousand other presidents, Purdue would have as many students, as many buildings, as large a budget as it had in 1971. It would have taken massive incompetence, even greater incompetence than that possessed by most university presidents, to have prevented such growth.
But while without Hovde Purdue would have been as large, it would have been a very different university. I have tried to think through, as honestly as I can, the Hovde contributions which are unique—which made Purdue different.
Let me briefly list what I believe make up this “Hovde Hallmark” on Purdue:
1. Foremost in President Hovde’s mind was always not just “what is good for Purdue” but “what is good for the young people of Indiana.” During his quarter-century presidency, Indiana developed one of the best integrated systems of higher education in the nation. The Indiana Conference of Higher Education, the Indiana Plan, the seventeen years of cooperative legislative approach of the four state universities, the development of the regional campus system, the joint campuses with I.U., and in his last year the establishment by the General Assembly of a state Commission for Higher Education with the full support of the state universities—all of these constitute a remarkable story of planning and cooperating unparalleled in the fifty states. Many other people, of course, played important roles. But without Frederick Hovde the story would have been so different as to be unrecognizable.
2. The magnificent financial management and stability of Purdue. Hovde insisted upon meticulous and sound financial management, second to none in the nation. He had two great chief business officers who deserve part of the credit, R. B. Stewart and Lytle Freehafer, but it was he who gave them their tasks and used his authority to insure implementation. Not only is this financial excellence “right” in a public institution; it has proven a godsend to the next president, Arthur G. Hansen, and the faculty and students he serves.
3. Maintenance of academic control in the hands of the individual schools of the university. Much of Purdue’s uniqueness and strength has lain in the fact that the academic control of the university has resided in the individual schools, not in the general university faculty. Under Dr. Hovde this organization was continued and even strengthened, despite pressures to the contrary.
4. Continuation of the university in its traditional role as a land-grant institution. Despite tremendous changes in higher education, Purdue did not abandon its role as India na’s land-grant university. Agriculture and the “mechanic arts” remained Purdue’s basic missions and were broadened and strengthened during the Hovde years with the additions of the schools of Veterinary Medicine, Industrial Management [now Management], and Technology.
5. A broadening of the university, so that it could play its land-grant role more effectively in a changing world. During the Hovde years the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities and arts were all strengthened.
6. The development of Purdue as a major graduate school to meet the increased national demand for advanced scholars in Purdue’s traditional mission areas.
7. Preservation of the power of the office of the presidency. During a time when the pressures from all sides were almost overwhelming, President Hovde did not “give away” the powers of the office of the presidency to the faculty, the students, the alumni, or even the trustees.
8. The impeccably managed intercollegiate athletic program—one of the most difficult tasks set before any president.
9. President Hovde kept before all of us a continual goal of excellence, reminding us always that this is what really counts in a university.
President Hovde, of course, made mistakes. If I were pressed to discuss his greatest fault as president, I suppose I would describe it as a loyalty which prevented him from seeing the faults and failings of those of us who were on his team. This was perhaps a serious flaw, but in another sense a rather wonderful one. I suspect it is a fault shared by most of those who have been great leaders of men.
To you, President Hovde, we can only express our love, and respect, and thanks. You have held before us and this university a challenge to strive to better and better—a little like the challenge King Arthur held out to his Table Round so long ago. It would, of course, be dangerous to carry the analogy too far—many indeed would have vied to be Lancelot, at least up to a point; and whom could we dare nominate for Modred? But as in the song from Camelot, we can all look back over the Hovde years and someday our memory may be that the rain really did never fall till after sundown; that at precisely 8: 15 the moonlight did appear; and we’ll be sure that there was not, a more congenial spot, for any university, than Hovde’s Camelot—our own Purdue of the Hovde Years.
Purdue University
J OHN W. H ICKS
Preface
During the many pleasant hours I was privileged to spend with Fred Hovde over three years, he often expressed his gratitude for a life into which a benevolent fate had brought so many interesting people, challenges, and experiences. He always seemed to me to be somehow slightly in awe of the fact that so much had happened in the life of one man—and that he was that man. He has always felt that, in his words, he was “a very, very lucky man.”
Likewise, I was very, very lucky to have been selected to prepare this story about Fred Hovde. More to the point, I consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to be closely attuned to a man whose company is not only pleasant to share, but a man who is, I sense, touched with greatness.
We all have our own ideas of greatness; my own include many facets—the attainment and exercise of power not necessarily being one of the most important. The truly great are always, it seems to me, those rare individuals who give more to life than they take from it. If so, then certainly Hovde qualifi