This month in Harvard history

• April 1910 – The Andover-Harvard Theological Library formally comes into existence. Owen S. Gates, former Librarian of the Andover Theological Seminary, becomes the first librarian of the combined collections.
• April 3, 1924 – At a meeting of the Faculty of Education, President A. Lawrence Lowell proposes that the Graduate School of Education reorganize its instructional program and establish new standards for its degrees (both topics of previous faculty concern). Central to these proposed changes is the notion that training for a career in education is most profitable before the teacher starts teaching. This shift requires that admission be limited to recent college graduates with no previous teaching experience or training. The new two-year Master of Education program takes effect in 1927. The Doctor of Education degree remains open to the more limited group of research-oriented individuals.
• April 15, 1937 – The College’s academic business comes to a virtual halt after printed announcements of a (nonexistent) noonday lecture on “Scientific Aspects of Birth Control” by one “Arnold N. Childes” lure some 2,000 students to the New (Lowell) Lecture Hall. Ten students mastermind prank and pull it off with anonymity intact until many years past graduation.

-From the Harvard Historical Calendar, a database compiled by Marvin Hightower