Valentine for Rochester

For 18 months the trustees of the University of Rochester have been dangling a rich prize before the eyes of U. S. educators. In a search for a successor to President Rush Rhees they examined the qualifications of no less than 101 candidates. Last week they voted to drape the presidential mantle over the husky shoulders of Alan Chester Valentine, 33-year-old Master of Yale's Pierson College.

The University of Rochester had the tremendous luck to be located in the city of Rochester, N. Y., home of George Eastman and Kodaks. The generous Kodak-maker showered Rochester with gifts of $35,500,000 during his lifetime, $20,000,000 more at his death in 1932. Rochester built a School of Music, a School of Medicine & Dentistry, a whole new campus for its College of Arts & Sciences, and still has an endowment of $54,000,000, fifth largest in the land.

To become a great university, many alumni feel that Rochester needs a great man with a great idea. For such a man and such an idea they turned last week to Alan Chester Valentine. They saw a pleasant, stocky young man with dark hair & blue eyes, a fondness for rough sports, no doctor's degree, and a career of only seven years as an educator. At Swarthmore he had won the esteem of President Frank Aydelotte by playing good football, making Phi Beta Kappa, winning a Rhodes Scholarship. In 1928 he was called back to Swarthmore as an assistant professor of English. In 1932 Yale's President James Rowland Angell persuaded him to go to New Haven. Within a year President Angell had made him chairman of the Board of Admissions, full professor, Master of Pierson College. Last week Rochester guessed that Messrs. Angell and Aydelotte had had much to do with the selection of their mutual protege to be, like them, a college president.

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