DEPARTMENT REPORTS. 107 



REPORT OF DIRECTOR OF SUMMER SCHOOL. 



President F. S. Kedzic, Agricultural College, 

 East Lansing, Michigan. 



Dear Sir: 



The following is a report relative to the Summer Session for the season 

 1921: 



This is the eighth annual session. In accordance with the policy of previous 

 years, the session was organized along the same lines as heretofore. We 

 continued to offer a large nunber of courses taken from the regular curriculum. 

 As a result we found a larger number of our regular students taking summer 

 work this season than ever before. There can be no disputing the fact that 

 the summer session is of inestimable value for the regular student since 

 he is using it, in increasing numbers, for removing deficiencies, shortening 

 his course, or obtaining desirable courses in addition to the regular subjects 

 of his course. 



As in several previous years, special courses in agriculture, home economics, 

 club work, and pedagogy were offered for the benefit of rural teachers. An 

 experiment in this connection was undertaken. A well-trained and experi- 

 enced teacher of grades, in the person of Miss Effie Caskey, County Normal 

 Instructor, of Ionia, Michigan, was engaged to teach a group of miscellaneous 

 school children from East Lansing as a means of demonstrating m.ethods of 

 handling a rural school. The rural teachers in attendance observed this 

 teaching and then discussed with the critic teacher the many pedagogical mat- 

 ters involved in such instruction. 



The practice of previous years of holding conferences was continued, includ- 

 ing the Boys' and Girls' Club, the Rural Conference, and Economics Confer- 

 ence. The programs were arranged in accordance with the interests of the 

 various groups which included all told, several hundred people. The Eco- 

 nomics Conference was held in cooperation with a group of rural people who 

 camped upon the college grounds during their stay. These programs, in 

 addition to using our owai faculty members in various capacities, brought to 

 the campus many excellent speakers whose presence here was not only an 

 attraction to the special groups but they were a source of inspiration to 

 regular students and teachers. Conspicuous among the imported talent 

 were Dr. Thomas N. Carver of Harvard University, whose work in the line 

 of agricultural economics ranks as the foremost in the land. Dr. Ernest 

 Burnham of the Western Normal, a very popular speaker and student of 

 education, who gave a series of addresses. Dr. G. F. Warren of Cornell 

 University, was present and discussed the subject of price of agricultural 

 products. Hon. L. L. Driver, State Bureau of Education, Pennsylvania, 

 talked on school consolidation. 



A very important group of summer students consisted of public school 

 teachers, about twenty in numljer, who are preparing themselves for teaching 

 under the Smith-Hughes law pertaining to the teaching of agriculture in the 

 existing high schools, and especially in the agricultural high schools now in the 

 process of organization in many parts of our State. These men are graduates 

 of liberal arts institutions for the most part, and arc experienced teachers 

 who come here to get agriculture. The summer school enables them to do 



