Coulter believed that one of the first duties of the dean was to inspire and uplift the students in active service. He spoke of the soul and of the spirit and of the divine quest of "lifting youth into higher ideals, into a nobler life." (Author)

A biographical sketch of LeBaron Russell Briggs, "the first officer in the history of American higher education charged with responsibility for student relations as separate and distinct from instruction." He was appointed Dean of Harvard College in 1891. (Author)

Sketches of four early deans in the student personnel field, Stanley Coulter, Mary Bidwell Breed, Gertrude S. Martin and Herbert E. Hawkes, are presented. (Author)

This brief biography of Marion Talbot (born in 1858) touches on her interest in educating the consumer, her belief in equality between the sexes, her work as Dean of Women at the University of Chicago, and her research. Talbot was concerned about the changes urbanization, industrialization and technology were making. (Author/JEL)

Reviews the work of Gertrude S. Martin who did research on the position of dean to women and other research in a field that would come to be known as student personnel work. Her career personified problems she had identified. (BEF)

Mary Bidwell Breed predicted that midwestern universities would probably "pass through a stage of educational development in which the liberal arts are entirely feminized, the men are entirely commercialized." We can appreciate how close she came to pinpointing trends which did not begin to be reversed until sixty years later.…

Reviews the life of Thomas Arkle Clark, former Dean of Men at the University of Illinois, whose writings and speeches helped define the Dean of Men role and publicize the office. (Author)