The Campus
(1883)
Number of Students:
90
Number of degrees awarded:
10
Instate undergraduate tuition:
$36
New buildings:
(none)
|
Paul A. Chadbourne,1866-67 and 1882-83
Paul Chadbourne served as the second president
of Massachusetts Agricultural College. With Levi Stockbridge and Henry
Goodell, he has the distinction of having been named president twice.
Chadbourne was born in North Berwick, Maine. After
graduating from Williams College and teaching for several years, he
joined the faculty of Williams College as Professor of Chemistry, Botany,
and Natural History in 1883. Interested in politics, Chadbourne served
in the Massachusetts Senate in 1865 as a member of the new Republican
party. He was appointed to the state Board of Agriculture, where he
met several of the founders of the college.
His first term began in 1866, with a vigorous
push for the construction of buildings for the campus, including South
College and College Hall. Chadbourne’s term also saw the development
of the college’s first curriculum. But he resigned due to ill health
before the college opened to admit its first class of students.
He later accepted the position of President and
Professor of Metaphysics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison
from 1867 to 1870. Two years later he returned to Williams College
to assume the duties of president there until 1881.
Chadbourne returned to Massachusetts Agricultural
College in 1882, 15 years after the conclusion of his first term. In
his second term, he advocated for financial support for poor students
and additional funding for expansion of the campus and the faculty. He
also reformed the curriculum, offering two broad courses of study,
one “agricultural and scientific” and the other “scientific and literary.” Chadbourne
intended to close the gap between the agricultural college and the
more established liberal arts colleges. The new curriculum he planned
had not yet come into effect by the time of his death in 1883.
|
|
