70 STATE BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



REPORT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF DRAWING AND DESIGN. 



President J. L. Snyder: 



Dear Sir — I herewitli beg leave to submit to you my annual report 

 as head of the Department of Drawing and Design for the year ending 

 June 30, 1912. 



The department under the new schedule is offering 20 courses of 

 which eleven are freehand and one a history course. Of these five are 

 either electives or options. The three courses open as options as against 

 music have proven very popular and the students have done good work, 

 which seems to justify the experiment. There has been no falling off 

 in attendance or interest. 



I am planning the freehand courses to be as connected as possible 

 and also progressive in the hope that the w^ay may open up for the 

 development of an industrial art course spoken of in my last report, 

 when these would fall naturally into the general scheme. There is un- ' 

 doubtedly a strong feeling among the women in favor of such a course, 

 and I feel sure that if available it would receive its fair share of stu- 

 dents and prove popular and profitable. 



Efforts are being directed all along the line toward co-ordinating and 

 improving the courses; this work will probably not cease as improve- 

 ment is always possible. We are gradually getting into the use of 

 printed layouts in our mechanical courses, particularly in descriptive 

 geometry. We believe it conserves the time of the student so he can 

 concentrate attention to a greater degree upon the more important 

 phases of the work. 



The department equipment has been increased by a very much needed 

 group of casts for the freehand classes, and the walls of the hallways 

 have been hung with frames containing students' work; it is ultimately 

 the puri)ose to include reproductions of works of art allied to tlie work 

 done by students. It is also the aim of the department to broaden the 

 students as much as possible consistent with the work they are 

 scheduled to perform, and the teaching staff is being gradually trained 

 to be leaders and guides not task masters, and I am pleased to say the 

 enthusiasm and interest of the students in the various courses warrants 

 the assertion that we are accomplishing our purpose. There is much 

 left 3'et to be desired in the line of high standards of scholarship, but 

 this can only come through a general stiffening in requirements all along 

 the line and particularly in uniformity in rigid standards of scholar- 

 ship after entrance, and less concern at the resultant thinning of the 

 ranks of the students. 



The department teaching has been done by the following staff men- 

 tioned in seniority of appointment: Victor T. Wilson, Chace New- 

 man, Caroline L. Holt, Isabel Snelgrove, Max D. Farmer, J. L. Morse, 

 Instructor in Mechanical Engineering; R. E. Bissell, Student Assistant. 



Again I can report with satisfaction a fine esprit de corps of the 

 teaching staff who have contributed so much to the success of the de- 

 partment work, and I am constrained to repeat again my hopes that a 

 salary schedule may be decided upon so that deseiTing instructors 

 may have something definite to look forward to as a reward for faithful 



