Rising to Quality

In Waterville, Me., a tall, friendly man of 65 sat back and mused: "I think I was born to teach, not to be a college president." J. (for Julius) Seelye Bixler should have known better. Last week, as his successor prepared to take over solid little Colby College, retiring President Bixler's 17-year record looked hard to beat.

Colby roiled in confusion when Connecticut-born Philosopher Bixler arrived in 1942, after teaching at Harvard Divinity School. Founded in 1813, Colby had opened on a pleasant site between the quiet Kennebec River and a country road. A century later, the campus lay suffocating between smelly paper mills and a clanking railroad.

Up the Hill. Colby dreamed of moving to a comelier, 650-acre site on Mayflower Hill, outside Waterville. Beginning in 1933, square-jawed President Franklin W. Johnson hunted the money ceaselessly. One man sent $20,000 just because he pitied Colby as he passed by on the train. But World War II canceled construction and dashed the dream. When Bixler arrived, Mayflower Hill had only three completed buildings and five shells. Old Colby (enrollment: 651) still squatted on the wrong side of the tracks.

For ten more years, Bixler tried to climb the hill. He finally made it in 1952. Today Colby has 27 Georgian buildings, a plant valued at $15 million. Enrollment has hit 1,180. From 53 teachers, the faculty has increased to 113. Faculty salaries have gone up 50%.

Start to Think. Sitting pretty in southern Maine, Colby has attracted money because Bixler has given the campus intellectual tone. Along with boosting the curriculum, notably in philosophy and religion, he launched art and music departments. He fostered a "creative thinking" course, spurring students to take off on any subject from cider to Columbus. He stirred the school to start a scholarly magazine, to ponder a "book of the year," e.g., The Lonely Crowd; Science, Magic and Religion. He got Colby to give TV courses for credit to rural viewers, made the school a summer center for adult education (2,000 students last year).

Bixler's trademark has been a constant stream of exciting outside lecturers. One week he mustered Educator Robert Hutchins, Philosopher Brand Blanshard, Industrialist Clarence Randall, Novelist Robert Penn Warren. Sometimes the results startled Bixler himself. "I am continually delighted by the student response," he once said. "There is this marvelous rising to quality. They know the genuine and the authentic. They are appealed to by the truly worthwhile."

Into Bixler's shoes this month steps Colby's Dean of Faculty Robert E. L. Strider, 42, who taught English at Connecticut College before switching to Colby in 1957. More "intellectual curiosity" is new President Strider's aim. It would not have been possible if Colby had not risen to the quality in J. Seelye Bixler. Colby no longer gets its students mainly from Maine; it is drawing bright applicants from all over the East. Says outgoing President Bixler, who will teach religion at the University of Hawaii next year: "They aren't all topnotch students, but most of them are eager. People around here are now responding to ideas."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.