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A number of interdisciplinary courses were introduced either through the cooperative efforts of two or more departments or under the auspices of the ongoing General Studies program. The establishment of the Experimental Curriculum in 1966 also encouraged the faculty to try out new ideas for course offerings.

In 1970 the faculty approved another experimental project called the Liberal Studies program, under which up to 50 selected freshmen were permitted to choose, with the advice of a faculty counselor, an individualized course of study without following the normal graduation requirements. This program was carried out from 1971 to 1974.
In 1967 the university initiated an African Studies program at the urging of President Kerstetter, who had recently visited several countries in that continent and advocated DePauw's assuming a special academic interest in that part of the world. The first director of the program, anthropologist Svend E. Holsoe, established an African anthropological museum in the basement of Asbury Hall and published the Liberian Studies Journal from his DePauw office. His successors, historians Walter T. Brown and John E. Lamphear, expanded the program to include on-campus institutes and study tours in Africa.

To encourage the study of Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America the faculty also adopted a non-western graduation requirement and began to add more courses in the history, language and literature, and general culture of those areas. Chinese, Japanese, and Swahili were taught for several years, and growing numbers of foreign students and visiting professors were brought to the campus.

To help achieve the administration's goal to offer every student an opportunity to become acquainted with another part of the world, a greater variety of foreign study programs was made available. In addition to DePauw's own two Contemporary Europe Semester programs, one based in Freiburg and the other in Vienna, and the Mediterranean Studies program based in Athens, there were several GLCA-sponsored programs located in Africa, Colombia, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Scotland, and Taiwan.
Margaret Mead

 

 


DePauw students also had the option to enroll in a foreign university on an individual basis or participate in an overseas program administered by another institution. Though not everyone took advantage of these opportunities, a large majority of the student body participated in some kind of off-campus educational experience, either abroad or in one of the various domestic programs located in New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Oak Ridge (Tennessee), and other cities.

An interdisciplinary program in Black Studies was inaugurated in 1972, with an area major available in that field by the following year. With the aid of a grant from the Lilly Endowment a special program entitled Careers in Business and Public Service came into existence in 1973 under the direction of the economics and business department. It consisted of a set of core interdisciplinary courses plus specific offerings related to five career options: business, public administration, institutional management, mental retardation and mental health training, and musical arts management. Each student enrolled in this program also participated in a supervised field internship.

The university sponsored several academic symposia in various fields during these years, including one held on Old Gold Day weekend in October 1972 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the distinguished historian Charles A. Beard. Both he and co-worker, Mary Ritter Beard, were native Hoosiers and Phi Beta Kappa graduates of DePauw University.

Some changes were effected in departmental organization including the elimination of the home economics and secretarial science departments. Anthropology was added to the title of the sociology department and economics became economics and business. Similarly earth sciences replaced the former departmental title geology and geography, while classical languages was renamed classical studies.

In 1974, after having begun to offer courses in digital computers shortly after the establishment of the university's Computer Center a decade earlier, the mathematics and astronomy department incorporated computer science in its title. The next year the speech department became the department of communication arts and sciences.  The aerospace department was discontinued in 1973, when the federal government withdrew the Air Force R.O.T.C. program because of lagging enrollments and budgetary restraints. Three years later, however, the university was able to make arrangements with the Air Force department at Indiana University for DePauw students to enroll in aerospace courses on the Bloomington campus. A similar arrangement was made a year later with the Army R.O.T.C. unit at Rose-Hulman Institute in Terre Haute. The Army eventually sent an R.O.T.C. detachment to Greencastle to offer basic military courses on the DePauw campus.

 

 

 

 

The administrative offices also underwent a series of title and personnel changes, partly directed toward strengthening public relations and fund raising. In 1966 Norman Knights was named assistant to the president for planning and development, and Robert Crouch became vice president for development. After Crouch, an indefatigable fund raiser for his alma mater, retired in 1970, the former Air Force R.O.T.C. commander, Frederick Sanders, became director of development.

From 1969 to 1973 Knights served as executive vice president with broad responsibilities for the non-academic aspects of the university. James Cook was made associate director, then director, of alumni services; Patrick Aikman, director of publicity and the news bureau; Glenn T. Job, director of publications; and Marian Hoffman Maloney, assistant editor (later editor) of university publications.

In 1967 William Wright succeeded Riggs as dean of students. Oliver C. Rice came in 1969 as an assistant to the dean of students with additional responsibilities in the admissions office related to the recruitment of minority students. A new associate dean of students in 1971 was Brian R. Enos. The retirement of Value Williams in 1972 brought in Eleanor Sisson Ypma as registrar, the first in that post to possess a doctorate. Dr. Roger E. Roof succeeded Dr. Arthur W. Smith as university physician and director of health services in 1966.

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