The Natural Science Building
At the end of Professor Winchell's first period in the University in '73, the several subjects which comprised his professorship were divided. The chair of Botany passed to Eugene Woldemar Hilgard, Ph.D., Heidelberg, '53, who was succeeded two years later by Volney Morgan Spalding, '73, as Instructor in Botany and Zoölogy, becoming Professor of Botany in 1886. Upon his resignation in 1904 the chair was occupied by Frederick Charles Newcombe, '90. The work in Zoölogy passed to Joseph Beal Steere, '68, who became an Assistant Professor in 1876, after five years of travel in the interests of the University in South America, China, and the East Indies, where he collected some 20,000 specimens for the Museum. He became Professor of Zoölogy in 1879, and retained the chair until 1894, when he was succeeded by Jacob E. Reighard, '82. William Henry Pettee, Harvard, '61, assumed the work in mineralogy in 1875 under the title of Professor of Mining Engineering. In addition to his work in his own subject, he served from 1881 to 1904 as editor of the University Calendar and advisory editor of other University publications. Edward Henry Kraus, Syracuse, '96, who occupies the chair of Mineralogy at present, first came to the University in 1904 and succeeded to the chair in 1908. When Professor Winchell returned to the University after his term as Chancellor of the University of Syracuse, he became Professor of Geology and held that position until his death in 1891, when he was succeeded by Israel Cook Russell, New York University, '69. Upon Professor Russell's death in 1906, William Herbert Hobbs, Worcester Polytechnic, '83, was called to the chair from the University of Wisconsin.
Though courses in economics were given in the University almost from the first and; in fact, with International Law, formed the special field of work assumed by Dr. Angell for some years, the Department of Political Economy as such was not organized until after Henry C. Adams, Iowa College, '74, who came to the University as a lecturer in 1881, accepted the chair of Political Economy in 1887. The first step toward a chair in Sociology came with the appointment in 1899 of Charles Horton Cooley, '87, a son of Judge Thomas M. Cooley, of the first Law Faculty, as Assistant Professor of Sociology, from which position he rose to a full professorship in eight years. A separate chair of Political Science was not created until 1910, when Jesse Siddall Reeves, Amherst, '91, came as the head of the new department. The Department of Music had its first beginning with the appointment of Calvin Brainerd Cady, Oberlin, '74, as instructor in 1880. He became Acting Professor of Music in 1885, but resigned three years later when Albert A. Stanley, Leipzig, '75, came as the head of the Department and a few years later Director of the University School of Music, now closely associated with the work of the University though not in any way a part of it. After the disappearance from the Faculty roll of the name of the Detroit portrait painter, Alvah Bradish, who apparently gave a few lectures on Fine Arts during the period from 1852 to 1863, no work in fine arts was given until the appointment of Professor Herbert R. Cross, Brown, '00, in 1911. The work in elocution and oratory was definitely established with the appointment in 1889 of Thomas C. Trueblood, M.A., Earlham, '85, who had for some years held a lectureship in the University, as Assistant Professor of Elocution and in 1892 as full Professor of Oratory.
The chair of Semitics and Oriental Languages, held since 1914 by Leroy Waterman, Hillsdale, '98, was first established in 1893 when James A. Craig, McGill, '80, came as Professor of Oriental Languages, a title which was changed to Semitic Languages and Literatures and Hellenistic Greek the following year.
Following the example of Yale and Cornell, Michigan established a Department of Forestry in 1903, and called Filibert Roth, '90, to fill the chair thus created. For some time courses in forestry had been given in connection with the work in botany, but the growing interest in the preservation and conservation of America's timber resources made more intensive and systematic training seem desirable. A few years later, in 1909, a course in landscape design was established, which shortly became a department under the charge of Professor Aubrey Tealdi, a graduate of the Royal Technical Institute of Livorno, Italy.
The history of the development of special courses and degrees in the University, though interesting and suggestive, can only be given here in a brief outline. As Dr. Angell remarked in one of his reports, the governing board has been distinguished for the boldness and originality of its policy, making frequent changes in traditional college usages, some of which were freely criticized at the time by those who afterwards approved and even adopted them. We have seen how the University departed from the dead level of contemporary college practice in establishing Scientific Courses, and the admitting of those who were not seeking a degree as special students. A few years later, in 1855, came the first indication of one of the principal differences between the old University and that of the present time—the system of elective studies. The concession was a very small one, it must be acknowledged, one-third of the work in the senior year; but it was a break in the dike. This was all that was allowed for fifteen years, or until 1871, when all the studies of the senior year except philosophy became elective.