130 



Evening Session, Wednesday, November 2, 1904. 



The section was called to order at 9.30 p. m. by Cbairuian Jenkins, who 

 announced the subject for discussion to be : 



How Much Teaching, if any, is it Desirable that a Station ^^■0RKER 



Should do? 



H. P. Armsdy, of Pennsylvania. We are all familiar with the history of the 

 establishment of the experiment stations and with the very natural way in 

 which they were manned from the teaching force uf the colleges, the time of the 

 instructdr being divided between the college and the station. This method of 

 procedure was very natural and perhaps unavoidable at that time, and the 

 practice has continued up to the present. Dui-ing the last year for which 

 statistics have been published by the Office of Experiment Stations about 

 54 per cent of the station workers did more or less teaching. Of course such 

 figures are somewhat nnsleading since they give simply the number of indi- 

 viduals without reference to the amount of work done, but they at least show- 

 that a very considerable i)roportion of the workers in the stations are also 

 teachers. The proportion of course varies a good deal in the different stations. 

 In some stations — one or two — all members of the force are stated to have 

 more or less teaching work, and the proportion ranges from KM) per cent in 

 these cases down to a minimum of .about 5A per cent. The second largest is 

 89 per cent, and the second smallest about ir>i per cent. 



Moret)ver, the tendency seems to be toward an increase in the number of the 

 station men who are also doing teaching work. In the year ended June 30, 

 2897— the earliest for which I could readily find figures— the percentage of 

 station workers who were also teachers, excluding in this computation the in- 

 dependent stations of Connecticut, New York, Georgia, and Ohio, was 49.3, 

 and for succeeding years up to 1903 the figures run in round nund>ers 49, 50, 

 50, 52, ,52, 50, and 54, showing quite a plain tendency toward an increase in the 

 proportion of station workers who teach. 



Most of you will probably recall the address of Director Jordan at the New 

 Haven convention, in which he called attention to the fact that in that year a 

 very large proportion of the heads of dei>artments in stations were also teachers, 

 so that the teaching work was laid upon the higher officers of the stations rather 

 than upon the lower grade assistants. I think that would probably be equally 

 trut^pcrhaps more true— now. The fact of the matter is that tlie recent gnnvth 

 of instruction in agriculture — the differentiation of agricultural instruction — 

 has had a tendency to increase the demands upon the station specialist for 

 teaching. 



I think we all agree that it is an important question of station administration 

 as to how far this tendency is wise and desirable. Some, for whose opinion 

 upon such matters I have the very highest respect, urge very strongly that it is 

 desirable, in most cases, at least, that the experiment station worker shall also 

 be a teacher, and the teacher shall also be an investigator. They claim that 

 the two kinds of work are mutually helpful to each other. I am not clear that 

 I agree with that opinion, however. But this is too important a question for our 

 opinions or convictions to be settled subjectively by our own personal impressions, 

 and the thought that was really in my mind in suggesting this topic for discus- 

 sion was whether we could not iirofitably get together and compare our views 

 upon it. Of course the figures which I have presented are merely suggestive; 

 they probably do not represent quantitatively the situation, because, doubtless. 



