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One of President Humbert's first major steps was to initiate the Greater DePauw Program, a 10-to-15 year plan to raise $10 million, about half for new buildings and half for endowment. Marts and Lundy, a consulting firm of which Humbert's father-in-law, George Lundy, was vice president, surveyed the needs of the university and possible sources of financial support. Upon the firm's recommendation the first phase of the program was set in motion, a campaign to raise $1 million for a new library and $500,000 for other purposes, including faculty salaries. Willard Umbreit was transferred from the admissions office to direct the program. He was assisted by Orville Davis, who was named director of church relations, along with representatives of Marts and Lundy. By 1954 the campaign had collected $1,671,000 including a challenge grant of $150,000 from the Lilly Endowment. Approximately one-third of the alumni and former students solicited made contributions.

A building committee chaired by the librarian, Vera S. Cooper, began drawing up plans for the construction of a large modern library on the site of the former West College. Two specialists in library architecture, Joseph L. Wheeler and J. Russell Bailey, were called in to assist in planning a facility meeting both present and future needs of the university.

The resulting structure, designed principally by Bailey, a Virginia architect, departed radically from the Colonial lines of Asbury and Harrison Halls with which it formed an academic quadrangle. Cost considerations largely dictated its construction as a box-like, flat-roofed cube of reinforced concrete and brick. Named for distinguished alumnus and trustee Roy O. West and opened for use in 1956, the building provided sufficient space for the first time to house the university's library holdings and technical services.

The abandoned Carnegie Library was then made into the University Art Center, with considerable remodeling financed by contributions from alumni and friends of DePauw, and dedicated on Old Gold Day 1958. A new entrance with a large double stairway was added on the south side of the building, with its four great Ionic stone columns. Inside the former reading room of the library was converted into a spacious gallery for art exhibits, while the basement and upper floor furnished quarters for art studios, classrooms, a small theatre, and faculty offices. At the same time the university purchased the two-story frame building across College Avenue that had long served as a campus hang-out and remodeled it as an air-conditioned office building for members of the humanities and social sciences faculty.

The second phase of the Greater DePauw Program began in 1958 with another survey by Marts and Lundy. At the urging of President Humbert the goal was raised to $2 million. Led by Humbert himself, Norman Knights, the newly named director of public relations and financial promotion, and Robert Crouch, the secretary of alumni affairs, with Marts and Lundy, the campaign raised slightly more than the targeted amount by June 1961.
Just before it was completed the trustees authorized the construction of a new men's dormitory to replace antiquated Florence Hall. Constructed at a cost of $850,000 and designed by the same architectural firm, McGuire and Shook, that had drawn the plans for the Student Union, this was to be the last campus building to follow the Georgian Colonial pattern. It was named for the pioneer Indiana Methodist bishop, Robert E. Roberts, and opened for occupancy in the fall of 1961. Bishop Roberts Hall furnished living quarters for 150 men - later women - and dining facilities connected through a tunnel to the kitchen in nearby Longden Hall. The subsequent razing of Florence Hall left East College, Music Hall, and McKim Observatory as the only surviving 19th century structures on campus.

In academic matters President Humbert proceeded cautiously, perhaps in recognition of his inexperience in this area, and tended to rely heavily on the advice and guidance of senior faculty and administrative staff. To replace Dean Norris, who resigned in 1952 to accept the presidency of MacMurray College, he chose Robert Farber from the dean of student's office. Farber, who spent most of his adult life in various administrative posts at DePauw, was to serve as academic dean longer than anyone before or since. In 1952 DePauw alumnus John J. Wittich was named director of admissions and the Rector Scholarship Foundation, and another alumnus, Donald L. Tourtelot, was named the first full-time director of publicity and the news bureau.

The new position of dean of chapels was created to organize the weekly chapel and convocation programs, a task assumed by veteran Professor of English Jerome Hixson in addition to his teaching duties. In 1954, when a bookstore was added to the Student Union Building, Samuel T. Hanna was persuaded to become its first manager. The jovial "Sam" Hanna, a DePauw graduate who had operated his own bookstore downtown for many years, made the university's entrance into the book business a success from the start.

Other administrative shifts included the appointment of David W. Robinson as assistant dean of students in 1952, followed by William McK. Wright in 1957. Ethel A. Mitchell moved from the physical education department in 1960 to take the place of Lucille Scheuer with the new title of associate dean of students. Upon the death of Veneta Kunter in 1952 her assistant, alumna Value Timmons Williams, became registrar. Successive directors of the Memorial Student Union Building were Glenn W. Timmons in 1952 and John Nanovsky in 1956. DePauw graduate James N. Cook was named editor of the DePauw Alumnus in 1954 and also acted as assistant secretary of alumni affairs. In 1961 Louis J. Fontaine succeeded fellow DePauw alumnus Wittich as director of admissions.

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Air Force ROTC ceremony in 1955.  Captain
Joseph Campbell is at the microphone and
Lt. Colonel Frederick Sanders presents the
award to Eugene N. Holladay '57.
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Worth M. Tippy, a retired Methodist minister who had graduated from DePauw in 1891, was responsible for establishing the Archives of DePauw University and Indiana Methodism in two small rooms in the basement of the Administration Building in 1951. Tippy, who was named the first archivist, had studied archival procedures in Washington, D.C. and began collecting the large quantity of documents which are now stored in specially equipped rooms in the Roy O. West Library. He also played an important role in the removal of Old Bethel Church from Charlestown, Indiana where it had been built in 1807, to the grounds of Gobin Memorial Methodist Church. The log structure, the first Methodist church building in Indiana, was dedicated on Founders' and Benefactors' Day in 1955. It stands there today as a tangible reminder of DePauw's Methodist origins.

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