Wanted: Prestige

The University of Washington, one of the nation's biggest (15,500 students), was getting ready this week to take a look at a distinguished visitor who will also be its new president: Medievalist Charles Odegaard, 47, now dean of the College of Literature, Science and the Arts at the University of Michigan. In choosing him after an 18-month search, the regents expect to change not only presidents but the face of their university.

When Washington's President Henry Schmitz, 65, announced that he would retire, few tears were shed on his campus in Seattle. A former dean of the University of Minnesota's agriculture and forestry college, he went to Washington in 1952. He was a kindly man, who meant and did well for the university in his own way. The biennial appropriations zoomed from $22 million to almost $38 million; faculty salaries rose an average 28%, research grants and contracts quadrupled, and a sizable new building program was begun. But in spite of all these accomplishments, Henry Schmitz's administration made some major bloopers.

In 1955, when the physics department wanted to invite J. Robert Oppenheimer to speak, Schmitz barred him as too controversial (TIME, Feb. 28, 1955). That action, said eight outside scientists who had planned to attend a conference at Washington, "clearly placed the University of Washington outside the community of scholars." The next year, citizens were shocked to learn that the regents had approved the use of the stadium for a professional football game, secretly designed to raise money to subsidize athletes. "It is fantastic," stormed one professor, "what a cheap price is put on 'education' at this school." Added another last week: "We've had an IBM-type administration, uncreative, and insensitive to what it is that attracts people to the academic life."

To his credit, Schmitz approved an elected faculty senate with wide policy-making powers, never showed vindictiveness in dealing with his critics. But even before his retirement, the regents were determined to get a man who would raise Washington's academic prestige.

In Charles Odegaard, who will take over his new job Aug. I, they are sure that they have their man. A Harvard Ph.D., Odegaard arrived at Michigan the same year Schmitz went to Washington. In the next five years, his budget doubled to nearly $7,000,000; the faculty increased from 522 to 797. More important, the already high standards on his campus soared even higher. The classics experienced a renaissance; a stiff science program was put into effect last year, and the honors program was extended to allow bright freshmen and sophomores to strike out on their own. Last week, as Michigan mourned the loss of its able dean, Washington rejoiced. Observed Seattle's weekly Argus: "Seldom has a new university president been so universally acceptable."

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