Campus & Community

This month in Harvard history

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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 10, 1950 — Ralph J. Bunche — AM ’28, PhD ’34, Director of the United Nations Trusteeship Department, and future winner of the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize — is appointed to a government professorship (effective July 1, 1950). He is the first black person named to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Bunche expects to do teaching and research in international relations, international law, and colonial administration. But U.N. duties prevent him from teaching a single class. He resigns in 1952.

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