EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCE The Kirkpatrick Chapel, 11:00 A. M. and 2:00 P. M. The Educational Conference which was held on Thursday, October 12th, became in effect the first event of the celebration, rather than its prelude. It was held in the Chapel with sessions at eleven in the morning and two in the afternoon. It was arranged especially for the school superintendents, principals, and high school teachers of the State of New Jersey, and it was attended by about three hundred of them. Professor Louis Bevier, Ph.D., Litt.D., Dean of the College, presided at the morning session, and the following program was carried out: Dean BEVIER: Ladies and Gentlemen: It is certainly appropriate that the celebration of the one hundred and fiftieth year after the founding of the College should begin with an educational conference, and I will ask the President of the College to say a few words of greeting to you. ADDRESS OF WELCOME PRESIDENT DEMAREST LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, MEMBERS OF THE EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCE: I am glad to say just a word of welcome. I shall not occupy much of your time. It is a very great gratification to me, as President of the College, to greet you in this place to give a word of welcome to the speakers who come from a distance and to you who are residents of our own State of New Jersey. It is a happy thing, it seems to me, that the celebration of our one hundred and fiftieth anniversary begins, as the Dean has said, with an educational confer ence: and perhaps it is a very happy thing that this first gathering is in this renovated Chapel, the work here having just been completed, in fact the window behind me has been in apparently complete form only fifteen or twenty minutes. I welcome you here because we are of one mind, I think, in matters educational; we desire to conserve tradition so far as tradition is good, and we desire to be as well in the way of progress. I suppose that we are of a little different temperament, one and another of us; one thing appeals to one person and another thing appeals to another person. I confess that the historic always does appeal peculiarly to me; and to me it is an especial happiness-I do not know how far you share that feeling-to welcome you in this room where there is so much to tell the past of this College, the past of educational work in the State of New Jersey, the origin of the College itself. This window placed behind me is erected in memory of the first President of the College, Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh, who played such a large part in the history of the Colony of New Jersey, played so large a part in the history of the State, just after it became a State. Such a patriot he was, such a leader in the Church, such a worker for the education of young men, that it is a happy thing that his great-great-grandson has placed this window in this Chapel just at this time and that another great-great-grandson has given the Chapel renovation also in his memory. There are new tablets here today-one to Hendrick Fisher, who, we may safely say, was the leading layman in the Church and in the State in the central part of the Colony of New Jersey in the early days, and the leading layman in the founding of this College. Hardenbergh first in the Church, Hendrick Fisher first in the State, united in Church and in State as leaders of education and in all good things. This memorial is the gift of the New Jersey Chapter of the Society of Colonial Wars. Another tablet just erected is in memory of the men of Rutgers who enlisted in the Civil War, a gift of the class of 1880 of Rutgers College. A third tablet on the outside of Queen's Building has been erected by the Society of Sons of the American Revolution to the memory of the men of Rutgers, the men of old Queen's, serving in the Revolutionary War. Here today I imagine there may be two things especially in your mind, as they are in mine. First, respect for tradition, thought of the origin of things, honor to the fathers who through the years have guided this College in its ever enlarging usefulness. The other thing, the forward look toward what is new perhaps, zeal toward what is best in education, definite purpose that we all as educators give ourselves as we may to an enlarging of the influence of the State College of New Jersey, planted on the old Colonial foundation of Queen's. You are welcome here because, in a way, it is your home, the headquarters of the highest work in education maintained by the State of New Jersey. Again, in the name of the Trustees and the Faculty of the College, I bid you welcome. Dean BEVIER: We are honored to have with us a representative of the United States, in Dr. Philander P. Claxton, United States Commissioner of Education, who will speak to us on "The Federal Government and Public Education." ADDRESS PHILANDER P. CLAXTON, A.M., Litt.D., LL.D. United States Commissioner of Education LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: Since it is probable that I am not to have the pleasure of being here tomorrow I want to bring this morning a word of greeting from the Bureau of Education and from the Nation on this occasion, the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of this institution that has done so much for the life of this State and of the country at large. |