In the last Sallyport magazine, I noticed that one of the books reviewed was Rice Professor John Boles’ University Builder: Edgar Odell Lovett and the Founding of the Rice Institute. I decided almost immediately that I should read it, even though I was a little hesitant since it only listed availability through the publisher. It turned out to also be available on Amazon, so I bought one.
About a year ago at the library I happened to pick up Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy, and the book ended up having deep resonance for me, only some of which I was able to express in the entry I wrote. University Builder has had similar impact and resonance for me. Addams and Lovett, although very different in background and personality, both created amazing institutions essentially by their own determination and effort, yet in their individual creation they also realized the emerging ideals and values of the times that surrounded them. I’m fascinated by stories of such accomplishments, and the people who make them.
By all accounts Lovett was an absolute giant of a man, charismatic, thoughtful, courteous, determined, optimistic, and visionary. Within only a few years, starting from nothing but an idea and a good chunk of money, he managed to create an internationally-known, first-tier American university. His experiences at the University of Virginia and Princeton and in Europe, at a time when academic life was moving forward from the classics into the modern realm, led him to conceptualize an ideal modern university very different from his undergraduate experience at a small college in West Virginia. The most fascinating part of the book is watching Lovett’s vision take shape as he moves up the faculty ladder at Princeton and is eventually invited to become Rice’s true founder (William Marsh Rice is probably more accurately labeled its benefactor) and first and longest-serving president.
Most Rice students know the story of the Grand Tour that inspired Lovett’s vision, and it’s interesting to see it laid out in detail, with a record of where he went and what he learned. The essential points to have come out of the tour still characterize Rice today: a unified architectural vision; emphasis on both research and teaching (Boles includes a quotation from Lovett to the effect that the person best equipped to lead another from ignorance to knowledge is a person engaged in leading himself similarly); egalitarian and inclusive student government and institutions, and a model of engagement with the broader community ( ‘beyond the hedges’, though there weren’t any hedges then — there’s a rather startling picture of the campus on the first matriculation day as an almost completely blank flat plain). The book also gives insight into William Marsh Rice and the initial and later trustees, people whose names are immortalized on the colleges and buildings: Will Rice, Hanszen, Wiess, Baker, and George R. Brown.
For anyone to whom Rice is a meaningful place, the story of its founding is likely to be both deeply moving and illuminating and sometimes unexpectedly funny. Julian Huxley, an early professor at Rice who lived in the ‘faculty tower’ (the present-day Will Rice College tower, if I understand the description correctly), wrote that the food was horrible. Anyone who experienced CK knows that that didn’t change for almost 90 years! The first dormitories didn’t even have screens to keep the mosquitos out until after the term had started. From the very earliest days of the intercollegiate athletics program, there have been serious concerns about the level of academic aptitude required from the athletes, and whether there is a bending of standards involved with running, most particularly, a successful football team.
The book left me with a much deeper understanding of Lovett’s vision for Rice and how difficult it has been to realize it through the varying circumstances of history, with Lovett steering Rice through the Depression and the two World Wars, and the board and later presidents now taking on the challenge of envisioning Rice’s second century. I was particularly touched by a photograph of the opening ceremonies, held in front of what is today called Lovett Hall, where the only difference between that day and the day I crossed a similar wooden platform to pick up my diploma seems to be that more people were wearing hats that day.
I still have concerns about whether Lovett’s vision will continue to be honored as the university moves into the 21st century, because of the increased pressure on finances and admissions, the apparent loss of appreciation of the quirky spirit that characterizes Rice in the race to stay in the ‘top tier’, and the increase in the university’s size. But University Builder left me oddly comforted on that score, simply by illustrating how complex it is to become and remain a leading university, and how much of it is dependent on the university remaining contemporary with the times in which it serves.