Lincoln Hall Project
Surviving the Crash
A Higher Cause
Research Flickers but Survives
Although grants and funding were harder to come by during the Great Depression, faculty at the University of Illinois still conducted research that shaped and influenced their fields for generations to come. Chemists at Illinois discovered artificial sweeteners and an essential amino acid, and pioneered infrared absorption spectroscopy. The career of Roger Adams, after whom Roger Adams Laboratory is named, reportedly peaked during the 1930s as he broke new ground on the topics of reaction mechanisms and pharmaceuticals. The main library shifted focus to adjust for growing historical research on campus, including that on Shakespeare and Milton. And a U of I physicist built the first cyclotron outside of Berkeley just one year after the department was nearly shut down for lack of funds.
Outlooks on Education
Harry Chase wasn’t the president of U of I for long (1930-1933) but his tenure spanned some of the worst—and pivotal—years of the Great Depression. With an eye on “conserving fundamental values” of the University, he advocated eliminating certain introductory courses, cutting back lab requirements, and increasing class sizes. He also decentralized administration and cut down on student regulations, thus heeding his inaugural vow that the institution must resist becoming an “educational factory in which the student is the impersonal unit of raw material and in which the methods of mass production pervade.”
By Dave Evensen